


Return of the Re-Animator

by Vituperative_cupcakes



Category: Re-Animator (Movies), Would You Rather (2012)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Post-Prison, Reunion Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2020-05-16 21:56:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 32,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19326865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vituperative_cupcakes/pseuds/Vituperative_cupcakes
Summary: Herbert West escaped prison and spent fifteen long years seeking out his former partner. Has he found the revenge he sought, or will something in Dan's new life change his mind?





	1. Prologue

_**2003** _

The man who stepped away from the prison had a brisk, professional demeanor, the kind that went unnoticed by passer-by on a subconscious level. Shoulders squared, chin jutting, step clipped.  _ I have places to be, _ his walk said,  _ and as long as you stay out of my way you don’t need to worry about it. _ The people on the sidewalk near the prison did not want to worry about the stranger briefly traveling through their midst. They wanted to go and rubberneck at the prison riot. They wanted to look at the specimens of fallen humanity and tut-tut at the violence and tragedy and feel self-righteously vindicated. It was just as well. There was no satisfaction to be had from the stranger, any question would be answered with a brief harrumph and a contemptuous glare. The people of the city let him pass and in a moment he was gone completely. Herbert West would be named among the deceased in a hasty inquest designed to neatly tie up loose ends rather than seek the truth. Certain figures in authority thought it best not to be known as the prison who let the mad doctor go, and so Herbert West was declared dead.

It wasn’t the first time.

It wouldn’t be the last.

_**2019** _

“I appreciate that my father has given you a long leash as far as financial contribution, Dr. Crawford.” Julian Lambrick smirked as he rocked chair that stood at the head of the boardroom’s long table back and forth with a toe. He rested his chin in one cupped hand. “I am not my father, though. I expect results.”

Gregory Crawford doffed the glasses he had begun needing more and more these days. “Results like what?” he asked, nothing but patient curiosity evident in his tone.

Julian’s smirk deepened. “Well, the stem cell project, for one. I’ve heard praises sung up and down about it and what it’s doing for science, but how far have we come on that, really?”

“As far as we can. Remember, we’re fighting the courts and the religious right on this topic still.” Gregory neatened a pile of papers and gently tossed it across the slick tabletop. “Our numbers are right here.”

Julian made a face at the paper. “I have people to read those for me,” he said, his husky voice dripping with contempt on the word ‘people’. “I want it straight from you, the head honcho, the big cheese. Really  _ sell  _ me on this.”

Gregory locked gazes with him. The younger Lambrick had been an utter nightmare to deal with ever since his father was knocked out of commission by heart surgery. Though Shepard Lambrick’s charm was both oily and insincere, he at least had the good grace not to dangle funding over one’s head like a schoolyard bully.

“I can bore you with facts and numbers,” he began softly, “I can try to pull some medical sleight-of-hand that will bamboozle you into giving us more funding, but the fact of the matter is that this is about more than the bottom line. Your father understood that. He wanted to sink his money into something that he knew was important, even if he didn’t fully understand it. Of course I will be sad if you decide to discontinue funding, and our research will suffer accordingly. But I know as well as you that the work is too important to be distilled down into mere words.”

Julian’s smirk deepened. “How does the saying go?  _ ‘Poor is the man whose pleasures depend on the permission of another’?” _

“It’s not pleasure, Mr. Lambrick. It’s work.”

“Well, just the same.” Julian stopped at the peak of his rocking, his flinty gimlet eyes piercing, his smile vanishing. “I’d hate to have to trash such a good working relationship, but I'm really in the business of streamlining my father’s investments.”

“Are we considered streamlined?”

“Hmmm, I'd place you squarely in the maybe pile.” Julian rose, his expensive black jeans (no formal wear for the Lambrick scion) creaking along with the chair. “I can’t say your little speech convinced me, but I'll toss these numbers to the boys and see what they bring back.”

Gregory’s face betrayed no show of emotion, his demeanor was professional and blank as it had ever been as he shook hands, his palm dry and free of sweat and his grip relaxed. He nodded to Julian Lambrick as he walked out flanked by his goons, watching them wind through the clinic hallways on the CCTV until they got in the limo and drove away.

Then and only then, did he allow his head to drop forward into his hands as he sighed, “jesus.”

Hours later he flicked off his ancient desktop computer, wincing slightly as the fan motor ground and sputtered out. At the Lambrick Genetic institute he was usually the last home for the day, often bumping into the cleaning staff on his way out. He was, of course, familiar with each by name. 

Gregory walked down the hall, flicking switches, testing doors, running his hand along the front counter. He made sure to tell night watchman bye, and wish his daughter a happy quinceanera. He was complimented often on how his bedside manner spilled over to other aspects of life. “Dr. Crawford is everyone’s friend,” the saying went around the office.

The thing they didn’t know, could never know, was that this friendliness was a line of defense, just one of many that he held so close to his chest you would have to look very closely to even notice they were there.

He got in his car (no Benz for Dr. Crawford, only a sensible sedan that got great mileage) after a cursory walk-around of the vehicle. He told people he had a bad habit of not closing doors all the way, hence the need to check his car every time he got in. He followed a route home that he changed up weekly, this week’s led him along a scenic drive past farmland that was being reclaimed for suburban housing. He punched in the code for his gate and drove in, waiting just inside the fence as the gate rolled back just in case someone tried to shadow him in. He punched in the standby code for the alarm system, made a full circuit of the house, then punched in the all-clear code. He poured himself some water from the filtered pitcher in the fridge, taking sips as he made a call.

Ten rings and he got the voicemail.

“Um, hi, I guess you’re not answering your phone right now.” The cold made his tongue feel clumsy and thick. He sat on an easy chair repaired with sparkly duct tape. “Fine. Okay. I wanted to talk to you so...call me back? I just got home, so...anytime.”

He took another sip, rolling his neck. He really needed to take a vacation, these long days were taking a toll on him. 

A creak sounded in the other room. Gregory’s body drew tense. He rose from his seat and promptly blacked out.


	2. New Beginnings and Old Frenemies

“Four years at Bellvue,” someone was saying.

Gregory groaned. He had a splitting headache.

“Transfer to Johns Hopkins. You’ve been a busy boy.”

The voice was diabolically familiar.

Gregory cracked an eye and found Herbert West seated like a human stormcloud in his office chair. He tugged at his wrists and found they’d been duct-taped. His whole body was tied to a kitchen chair.

Herbert had filled out slightly in the intervening years; prison had put muscle on his bones and living on the run had kept it there. His hair was shorter, and greyer, and his glasses were a more sleek modern style that gave him a paternal air, but the scowl on his face was as timeless as it had ever been.

“Of course with recommendations this glowing, who wouldn’t have you...doctor?” Herbert gave the word a polished venom only he was capable of. 

“They said you were dead.”

“The rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.” Herbert smirked. “Besides, you of all people should know death is nowhere near as permanent as most people think.”

No reply.

“Crawford. Interesting name. Fashioned after Crawford Long, I imagine.”

“Joan Crawford, actually. My mom was always a fan of hers.”

West looked unimpressed. “...I see. Gregory. Weak name. The name you’d give a kindergarten teacher. Your old name was much stronger. Did you ever look up the meaning in the original Hebrew? _‘God is my judge’._ The kind of name you’d give a doctor without peer.” A shadow passed over his face. He took slow steps to his bound prisoner. “And you are...without peer...aren’t you...Dan?”

Daniel cain faced Herbert West, working his jaw. Time had been kind to him. The recession of baby fat on his face had just revealed more flattering bone structure, squaring his jaw even more. His hair was also shorter, though it stubbornly clung to black more than Herbert’s, and that damn forelock of hair still dangled carelessly over his forehead. The air between them crackled with familiarity, along with a heaping helping of smoldering resentment.

“You hit me on the head,” he intoned.

“You fell and hit your head. You can’t think I'd take such a crude physical approach, Daniel? Especially since you’ve always been the more athletic one.” Hebert shifted, raising his brows slightly. “Isn’t this the part where you ask me why I'm here?”

“I know exactly why you’re here, I've been expecting you for years.” Dan blinked. “The alarm.” 

“I spent weeks watching your place, Dan. Weeks. And besides that, I spent an interminable summer working for a home security company so I could learn how they worked. Even installed a few very much like yours.”

“Well played, Dennis Rader.” Dan cricked his neck. “Well?”

“Well what?”

“If you’re going to kill me, then get it over with. I don’t want another one of your damned speeches, Herbert. In all this time you haven’t gotten anything new to say.”

Herbert had the gall to look affronted. “Really, Dan. I spend all this time tracking you down and you want to brush me off? We have a lot to talk about.”

“Oh what, you want to talk baseball? Want to know my sleep number? I have some Atkins recipes I could pass along.”

“How about you start with this?” Herbert tossed a newspaper clipping on the floor in front of him. Unfortunately it landed facing crookedly away so Dan had to tilt his head painfully in order to read it.

“MIRACLE RECOVERY” the headline screamed, “after a marathon surgery, the 22-year-old backpacker who fell into Consumnes River gorge will make a fully recover. Working round the clock, doctors Dildeep Singh, Hector Velasquez, and Gregory Crawford managed to revive the patient twenty minutes after flatlining…” he raised his eyes to West, who was smirking knowingly.

“You’ve been busy, Daniel. Surgical breakthroughs, research growing by leaps and bounds—”

“My own research,” Dan snapped, “don’t for one second think I'm incapable of independent thought without you West—”

“—I got you started on this path, I can recognize my own work—”

“—boy genius can’t stand the fact that anyone other than him has half a brain—” 

“—you plagiarist!” West snapped. He’d gone taut, crumpling the paper in his hand. Color had risen in his cheeks. Dan bit the inside of his cheek, returning the other man’s glare with interest.

“If you’re going to kill me,” he said, dropping each word like a cannonball, “then kill me. I have no interest in turning into another Dr. Hill, or rekindling whatever you think we had. You’re nothing to me, Herbert West. The Dan cain you worked with is dead.” 

Herbert looked at him, eyes inscrutable behind his glasses. He crossed his arms, looking Dan up and down.

“I don’t think he is,” he said mildly. He paced to the desk where Dan’s phone lay tantalizingly out of reach. “I think he’s afraid of me, of revisiting the past. Now why—”

He broke off as Dan’s phone rang. The caller ID said “Meg.”

He looked up at Dan. Dan stared back, trying not to show fear.

Herbert swiped on the answer button.

_“Hi daddy.”_ A girl’s voice poured out from the phone, energetic and light. _“I just got your voicemail, I'll be back home soon, I was just out with Becka and now I'm heading home, okay? Love you, bye.”_ She rattled the words out so that there was barely room for breath, and none whatsoever for a reply. She hung up.

Herbert picked up the phone. The photo for Meg’s contact was of a smiling tween, with honey blonde hair and heartbreakingly blue eyes, triumphantly standing atop a seaside boulder.

“You don’t have any pictures of her up in the house,” he said, almost accusingly.

Dan wet his lips. “...no.”

“A little gift from Francesca? Where is she, by the way?”

“Gone. Long gone. She’s not...Francesca’s not the mother.”

“Really?’ Herbert lifted his brows in mock surprise. “Although I should have guessed, Franny would never have stood for her child being named after her competition. I noticed a ring on your finger, however. Who’s the lucky stiff?”

Dan tried not to sound peeved. “No one. I wear it so my patient’s mothers will stop hitting on me. They call me ‘Dr. McDreamy’ around the office.”

An almost-fond smirk crept over Herbert’s face. “Oh dear. Well female attention was never your problem, Dan, it was your reaction to it. It seems you learned a lesson from our little escapades.”

“Yeah, don’t invite anything into your life that you can’t protect.” Dan said drily. 

Herbert chuckled. He shuffled through Dan’s wallet, a record as antiseptic as the walls of the house. “My goodness, do you have anything like a life outside of work?”

“Yeah.”

Herbert looked up expectantly. 

Dan returned the look warily. “I don’t keep personal things around, Herbert. I’ve had to move a lot over the years, and suddenly.”

“Really?” Herbert looked amused. “How has that affected little Meg. ...Megan? Or Meg?”

“She has nothing to do with this.”

“Does she know what her daddy used to do? Or what happened to her namesake?” Herbert had a sadistic gleam in his eye. “Have you told her what you’re running from? Does she resent you, being pulled from place to place and uprooting her life, for...what?”

“West.” Dan’s voice lowered. “Do what you want with me, okay? Kill me, inject me, whatever sick thing you’re trying to work out now, but my kid stays out of it.”

“Or else what?” Herbert said snarkily.

Dan just looked back at him, dark eyes intense. “You know what. You think Hill was bad? I can be so much worse.”

“I fail to see how you’ll be able to do anything if I kill you.”

“Come on, I know you. You’ll never ‘just’ kill me, West. You have something to prove to me.”

“I do not!”

“Then why are we talking? Just do it already.”

Herbert frowned. He retreated to Dan’s desk, shuffling through papers. 

“Just because I want to talk, does not mean I'm trying to prove anything to you, Dan.” he picked through several piles squinting. “In fact I….I…”

He looked up. Dan’s face was carefully neutral.

“What?” he asked.

Herbert looked at the paper in his hand, frowning as he skimmed. “This looks an awful lot like—”

Dan stayed silent.

“Somatic cell nuclear transfer,” Herbert murmured in a hushed and almost reverent tone. He glanced up at Dan, eyes wide.

“Welp,” Dan said sarcastically, “ya got me. I’ve been funneling funds into my secret cloning research. And I did it all without hitting anyone with a shovel.”

Herbert read on, mouth moving. “Donor subject deceased for—deceased. You’re cloning the dead?” his scandalised tone all but prodded: _without me?_

Dan frowned. He squirmed against his bindings. “Call it a passion project. And no, it’s not based on any of your original research, and only partially on the things we did together.”

Herbert looked at him, much of his earlier hostility fallen away. “Dan...you...you continued our work—”

_“My_ work,” Dan said flatly.

Herbert shuffled through the papers too fast to read them. “I thought you’d left everything behind, become just some run-of-the-mill doctor, but you…” he stopped, breath catching. “You stayed true, Dan. You kept it alive.”

Dan swallowed, looking everywhere but him.

“Dan,” Herbert started across the floor. “This means—”

_“I’m hoooome!”_ the front door slammed. 

Dan met Herbert’s eyes with a plea. A quick battle took place behind Herbert’s shuttered face. In two quick strides he was at his old partner's side, cutting through the tape with a knife. 

_“Becka was going through some things, sorry I didn’t say earlier.”_

Between the two of them, they divested Dan of his tape bonds.

“So what’s going on...here?” Meg stopped in the doorway, nose crinkling as she took in the bizarrely casual stances of her father and his guest. The chair in the room had been turned at an odd angle to hide the tape remnants from her point of view. The teen (older than her photo, it must’ve been taken on an earlier vacation) wore a pink shirt that said “yeet or be yeeten” in glittery blue letters and had her hair chopped to just above shoulder length. She bore a striking resemblance to Megan Halsey.

Herbert looked to Dan, a question burning in his eyes.

Dan cleared his throat. “Sweetie, this is—one of daddy’s colleagues. Say hello to doctor—”

“Gruber,” Herbert butted in, smooth as always. “Erich Gruber. Nice to meet you, young lady.”

“Great,” Meg said. She didn’t sound convinced. 

“Honey, Erich and I have some business to discuss,” Dan slipped in, “so why don’t you go take Pugsley for a walk while we finish, okay? We won’t be too long.”

Meg shrugged, eyes dropping in disinterest. “Sure.”

Herbert looked at Dan as her footsteps receded from the doorway. “Dan, was that…what I think it is?”

Dan looked at him warily. “What do you think it is?”

“I think you’ve been working on cloning dead tissue...and I think that girl is the spitting image of dean Halsey’s daughter.”

Dan swallowed, adam’s apple bobbing. “Well, you’d be right,” he admitted, “That girl was an embryo grown from dead donor tissue, emplanted in a surrogate’s womb. Her genetic makeup is identical to her donor’s, that is to say, the woman I loved.”

Herbert’s face was caught between disgusted and impressed. “Really, Dan? I thought you were better than—”

“Do I look like Carl Hill? Meg is my _daughter,_ Herbert. Nothing else. I see her as the child I would have had with Meg, if—”

He bit off the rest of the sentence, but it still filled the air between them. _If Meg hadn’t died, if he hadn’t let Herbert stay, if, if, if—_

Herbert’s entire demeanor changed. He looked at Dan, almost benevolent.

“And you kept this from me? Dan—” he stepped closer. “All I could think about in prison was you. How you betrayed the work, how you’d abandoned me for a normal life.” he stopped. “It...kept me going, honestly. My anger at you, and the establishment. But now...I'm not angry, Dan. I…” his voice caught. “You kept working, even though you put me away.”

Dan looked uneasy. “Yeah. like you said, the work was important.”

Herbert touched his arm. Dan didn’t pull away. “Don’t you see? We still have much to do together.”

“Do we?” 

“Yes.” Herbert’s eyes regained some of the old fervency. “I made some discoveries in my own research, as little as I could do with that piddling equipment. I have things I need to show you. I need—”

The sharp crack of wood against skull, and now Herbert was the one laid out on the floor. Meg stood above him, wielding a solid oak bat inscribed with the name ‘Pugsley’.

“Thank you honey,” Dan said wearily, leaning down to check Herbert’s pulse.

“So this is the guy?”

“This is him, yes.” Dan rolled back an eyelid. “This is the man we’ve been running from.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As of this writing the complete actor's commentaries for the first two movies is up on youtube, and I highly encourage people to look them up, especially Bride's. I am 90% sure Jeffrey Combs drank before recording and it's hilarious. He keeps singing random parts to the soundtrack and making Austin Powers references, it's A M A Z I N G. Look it up.


	3. Nothing to Fear

“Herbert.”

“Mmm.”

_ “Herbert.” _

Herbert slitted one eye. He was upright, at the very least. Dan was seated in front of him, tie loosened, drink in one hand. 

“I know you’re awake.”

Herbert groaned, making a show of opening his eyes.

The back of his skull throbbed, but the real sting came from his logical mind kicking him (metaphorically) in the side. He’d gotten  _ emotional _ on seeing Dan, since when did he ever let that happen? What had possessed him to open up to this backstabber? He slid his tongue over his teeth and seethed.  _ Never again. _

Dan sighed. “Good. I was worried she did some real damage.” He clinked ice in his glass. “I have to go back to the clinic for...something. When I get back we’re going to have a long talk. I just didn’t want to leave without making sure you were alright, alright?”

Herbert managed a weak chuckle. “Ever the bleeding heart, Daniel.”

Dan sighed. “You really don’t get empathy, even after all these years?”

“You’re the one who hit me on the head.”

“Or personal responsibility.” Dan finished his drink. “Look, we can talk about this. Just...stay in that chair. Nobody’s going to hurt you, and you can’t hurt anybody else. It’s for the best.”

Herbert tugged experimentally where his wrists had been zip-tied to the chair. “Oh yes, I feel  _ very  _ welcome right now.” 

“Cut it with the sarcasm. I could’ve laid your ass out and left you in front of the police station, but I decided to give you a little courtesy. I can revoke that.” Dan stood and shrugged on a jacket. “I’ll be right back. There’s the clock, time me if you want.”

Herbert scowled. “Of course. I’ll be waiting with bated breath, just as I've always waited for you and your cheap Protestant morality to catch up to me.”

“Presbyterian.” Dan gave him one last weary look as he stopped in the door. “I mean it. Stay here.”

Herbert listened to Dan’s footsteps fade down the hall, heard his car start up in the driveway and fade off into the distance.

He took stock.

His wrists, ankles, knees, and elbows had all been zip-tied to the chair, not tight enough to restrict blood flow but tight enough to prevent any kind of leverage to break free. The chair was a plain one like you’d find in a kitchen, no wheels he could easily roll across the floor. No scissors or knives or letter openers in sight.

Herbert put an ear out. Music played faintly in another room, probably the Meg model 2.0 was relaxing as she waited for her father.

Gritting his teeth, Herbert put his toe to the floor.

The first push made too much noise as the chair scraped across the hardwood. Herbert stilled, listening. No change in the music. No one coming down the hall to check on him. He made the next one smaller, pushing off with the ball of his foot. He alternated feet as he inched across the floor, taking a small eternity to reach the endtable where Dan had set his glass. Leaning forward as much as he could, West grabbed the rim up with his mouth. He set it directly in his open hand. Now for the hard part.

Herbert clenched his jaw as he pressed one particular spot on the rim of the glass. It eventually broke with a small  _ ting. _ Now he carefully flipped the glass upside-down, so that the jagged edge lay against the tie at his wrist.

Herbert sawed a little bit at a time, until the plastic finally gave. He couldn’t hold back a little gasp, hand cramping so badly that he nearly dropped the glass. He regained his grip, however, and managed to reach over just far enough that he could cut the tie on his other hand. Bit by bit, he cut with his improvised tool until he stood free once more.

Herbert removed his shoes and tied the laces together, draping the bundle on his neck. On sock feet he snuck into the hall, ears out for any disturbances. The music played on. 

Surely Dan would have invested in some kind of home surveillance system? Herbert tripped lightly through the house, tensing at each new corner for the swing of a bat. None came.

He paused by the door that leaked music. Through a crack he could see evidence that this was the girl’s room; fluffy duvet, floral wall hangings, the works. Was she perhaps perched on her bed even now, tracking his movements with some sort of tablet device? Or was she…

Herbert nudged the door open.

The room was empty. The sterility of the rest of the house had not quite infected this room, the walls bore band posters and tacky decorations bought from tourist traps and a mirror roughly half the height of the bedroom wall. The bed was covered with about a million stuffed animals. Herbert nosed around the desk. Among the selfies and half-realized sketches of outfits were trophies for marksmanship and martial arts. Dan had been quite a different father than dean Halsey.

Herbert smiled.

Something creaked off in the hall. Herbert retreated, making his way carefully to the back door. He armed himself with a kitchen knife or two before slipping out of the house, plastering himself to the side of the house as the sensor light kicked on. Once he reached the road he put his shoes back on.

He had a go bag packed and hidden at a nearby bridge. In it was a change of clothing, two small syringes of reagent, and cash. He could rent a motel room, lay low for a few days, reformulate a plan.

Herbert started walking, trying to look like he was out for a casual stroll. He regretted his decision to tuck the knives in his belt as they resettled in alarming ways.

“Hey you! Sir!” a neighborhood rent-a-cop let his LED flashlight dance over Herbert. “Hold on!”

Herbert casually strolled faster.

“Sir? Hey, I'm talking to you!”

He broke into a sprint, abandoning the kitchen knives in a nearby hedge. He could hear the security guard give chase, still huffing out orders to stop. Herbert dodged around mailboxes and leapt over hedges, cursing his luck.

His only warning a brief flash of headlights before Herbert was clipped by a car, spinning him around and sending him sprawling on the sidewalk. 

“Omigosh, are you all right? Here, I'll take you to the hospital.” The car’s passenger door swung open.

Herbert scrambled to recover his glasses. He regained his vision and found Meg in the driver’s seat, smile flawlessly showing off her dimple. Oingo Boingo blasted from the car’s stereo. Danny Elfman belted out that there was _ nothing to fear, nothing to fear but fear itself. _

Herbert glanced to the side. The neighborhood watchman was gaining.

Herbert dove into the passenger seat, feet dragging as the car already started moving. Ignoring the impotent pleas of the guard behind them, they drove away.

Herbert sucked in air, trying to rearrange himself as decorously as he could. Meg kept her foot on the gas, taking sharp turns.

“Should you even be driving this?” he asked testily.

“I have my permit.” Meg flicked on her turn signal. “Anyway, I just saved your butt, so you don’t get to question me.” She looked over at Herbert, lashes veiling her eyes. “Sorry about the hit on the head back there. Dad’s orders. No hard feelings, right?”

“None whatsoever,” Herbert said icily.

“I know you’re probably a psycho-whatever, but dad said to make sure you don’t hurt anyone or yourself. He also said to make sure you stayed put, but he also said you probably wouldn’t,  _ soooo  _ I'm doing the next best thing by kidnapping you.”

“I see.” Herbert cleared his throat. “So what was your plan for next, miss—” he had to stop himself from calling her  _ ‘Halsey’ _ . She really did look so much like her predecessor. Damn Daniel. Damn him and his soft heart.

“Follow my dad,” Meg said casually as if she were commenting on the weather. “He went to the clinic after hours, hella suspish. So we’re following him in case we need to bail his ass out.”

“Really?” Herbert said dryly.

“Look, if you knew the kind of people my dad works for, you’d be worried too. The old guy gave me creeps enough, but now his son is running things, and the way he looks at me...my dad won’t even let me visit him at work anymore. And he doesn’t talk as much.” Meg was looking contemplatively out the windshield. “You know him, right? He won’t ever admit when something’s really bad, and I think something’s really, really bad right now. Any other time you’d probably be a huge deal, but he just up and leaves you to go to the clinic? I’m worried.”

“Hmm.” He couldn’t stop himself from studying the girl, since they were in such close quarters. She really was like a ghost of Meg Halsey, but...more, in some unquantifiable way. She was brimming with life, bubbling over with it. Herbert wondered if it was nature or nurture, the by-product of having Daniel Cain as a father. He was probably supportive above all else, the kind of father who really did make it to every recital and science fair and soccer game.

That was what stung, not that Dan really did want the picket fence life over science, but that he was  _ good  _ at it.

Meg flicked her eyes over to her passenger. “You’re staring.”

“My apologies.”

“Do I really look like her?” Meg asked eagerly.

Herbert swallowed. “Alarmingly so.”

“Did you know her? My mom.” Meg looked wistful. “Dad told me about her a lot but…”

“We...didn’t exactly get along.”

“He told me that too.” Meg was grinning.

Herbert sighed. “Everything he told you about her, everything he said…”

“Yeah?”

“All true.” Herbert looked at the street signs. They were heading to the institute. “Every single word.”

“Oh yeah, and why should I trust  _ your  _ word?” Meg teased, sending the car along the winding hill road with a speed that made Herbert subtly grip the door handle. “You’re the guy we’ve been running from for years.”

“Who else would know better? I was your father’s closest colleague,” Herbert said incredulously, “in...certain ways, you could consider us friends.”

“Nuh-uh.” Meg shook her head. “You weren’t his best friend in school.”

“Really? Then who was?”

“His roommate.”

Herbert blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“His roommate was his best friend. They did everything together. One time they rigged up a catapult out of some surgical tubing and a funnel. Just one of those wacky college pranks, you know?”

Herbert did know. He could still feel the twang of the surgical tubing in his hands, feel the satisfaction as his glove filled with paint splattered entirely over his target (Dr. Hill’s car.) It was one of the few pleasant school memories that was in no way connected to reagent. Just him and Dan having the closest he’d ever approached to normal fun.

“What else did he say about his roommate?” Herbert asked in a carefully neutral tone.

“Oh, just the regular stuff. He said he started seeing less and less of him the more he hung out with you. You’re the Herbert Worst.”

Herbert scowled. “Oh ha ha ha, never heard that one before. Did he mention a name?”

“No,” Meg said casually, turning down the long drive up to the clinic. “Said it was too painful for him. Anyway, what’s with your name? My dad mentioned a Gruber too, wasn’t he the one that invented the corpse juice?”

“The proper term,” Herbert said with steely patience, “is reagent. And Dr. Hans Gruber did help invent the fluid, yes.”

“Was he important?”

Herbert looked at the building as they pulled up, its weak security lights reflected in his glasses. “He was the closest thing I've ever had to a reasonable authority figure. He was a father to me in very many ways, and mentored me when no one else would.”

“What happened? Or is that a stupid question?” Meg asked as she parked.

Herbert frowned. “I have a better question, just what the hell are we doing here?”

“You know why my dad left, yes?”

“Yes.” Suspicion clouded his face. 

“So go in after him and find out what he’s doing.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because you want to, that’s why. I have to stay here and drive the getaway car.” Meg uncapped a water bottle and glugged it down. “‘Sides, I'm not supposed to go in the clinic, daddy’s orders.”

Herbert raised his eyebrows. “Since when were you obeying orders?’

“He told me to watch you, so I did.” The cheeky dimple came back as she smiled. “I watched you break out of the house, and I watched you take those knives.”

“Yet you still let me in the car?”

“Well, here’s the thing.” Meg put the car in park. “You need me. If you want my dad on your side at all, you need me, so it’s not like you can just kill me.”

Herbert smirked. “What makes you think I want your father on my side, huh?”

Meg smirked right back. “The way you look at him.”

Herbert flushed. “What—what is that supposed to mean?”

Meg remained smiling, sphinxlike. 

She had her mother’s duplicity, that much was certain. Her penchant for subverting rules, too. Both qualities he would have found admirable in her predecessor if they hadn’t been in direct competition with his own. He could find this one almost likable, perhaps even useful, if he could use her as leverage against her father...

Still flushing, Herbert undid his seatbelt. “I’m going in. Circle around the back and park, but don’t turn the car off. We may need to leave in a hurry.”

“Can do, captain kangaroo,” Meg said fatuously, taking her foot off the brake so Herbert had to hop getting out of the car. He glared after her as she drove around the far side of the building.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I was re-watching the series for research, my _Beyond_ dvd finally crapped out on me. 10 years was just too much for the disc I guess. RIP that terrible movie (no but really, I have a special place in my heart for Beyond. move your dead bones, bones, bones)


	4. Nasty Habits

The door to the clinic had tape over the latch, an old college trick so cliche Herbert couldn’t help but snort. The cameras stared blindly at his intrusion, red lights dim to indicate they were off. Of course, Dan would have stopped the feed to make sure he left as little evidence of his after-hours intrusion as possible. Herbert could not stem the trickle of unease, though. There was something _off_ about the air of the place, a sense of unbelonging he could not just ascribe to himself being an intruder. He heard the rustle of someone going through paper and crept down the hall. 

The single lighted room in a long line of dark doors left a crooked rectangle of yellow spilling out onto the carpet. Herbert snuck up to the door, pressing himself to the wall beside the opening and peering around the edge.

Dan was going through a large mess of papers on the floor, muttering to himself. Herbert weighed the different options before clearing his throat.

“Dan.”

Dan jumped, naturally. _“OhJesusfuck.”_ he put a hand to his chest. “Herbert?”

“The same.” Herbert entered the room. “What are you doing here, Dan? What’s this pressing business you got called away for?”

“I left you tied up.”

“I know.” Herbert smirked.

“I asked you to stay. Herbert, this is personal business.”

“And? You know I can help, Dan.”

Dan weighed him carefully with his gaze. “...someone has been in my papers. I don’t know if they’ve taken anything.”

“If you’re accusing me, Dan, rest assured I haven’t set foot in here before now. I watched the building all day, but I didn’t dare approach. Too many cameras. I noticed they’re off now. Surely you can’t think I did that while tied up?” 

Dan’s gaze was still suspicious.

Herbert sighed. “What’s missing?”

“I’m not sure.” Dan crouched over the pile. “This is a pile of lab results mixed in with requisition forms.”

Herbert squatted beside him. “All your...sensitive papers are at home, correct?”

Dan nodded. “The most incriminating ones. The thing is, there are certain things I can’t take, it would leave a hole in the record more suspicious than an odd form or two.”

Herbert quickly organized the pile into neat stacks by type. Dan bit back a smile.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” Herbert’s eyes flitted over a form. Chemicals ordered in bulk. He could pick out at least three reagent ingredients. “Quite a generous supply you have here.”

“Yeah. I'll really miss it.” Dan sounded glum.

“Don’t tell me you’re just going to up and flee because of little old me?” Herbert said with mock-horror.

Dan grimaced, shook his head. “It’s not just you, okay? It’s...it’s me. I’ve come under scrutiny.”

Herbert made a cough that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. Dan looked at him.

“How terrible.” Herbert wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “The good doctor coming under fire for suspicious activity? Well, that just won’t do.”

“I’m being serious.”

“So am I. Daniel Cain has never been anything other than arrow-straight in his life.” His voice cracked and he couldn’t hold back the snicker anymore.

Dan put his head down and laughed a bit too.

“Crazy bastard,” he said almost admiringly. 

Herbert sorted papers. “Takes one to know one.”

They sorted in comfortable silence before Herbert felt brave enough to broach the subject: “So...what exactly was your plan here?”

Dan flicked through a stack. “Before you showed up? Pull stakes and run. I’m at a crucial time in my research, I can't risk discovery _now_ of all times.”

Herbert looked at him over the rim of his glasses.

“I know, I know, the irony is killing me. Look—” Dan shifted a pile of papers. “—I need to think of Meg’s safety, first and foremost. The research is important, but I can’t risk any endangering her life over it.”

“Yes, I've been meaning to ask you about that,” Herbert said, “Megan’s tissue. When would you say it was taken? Before or after her attempted resurrection?”

Dan didn’t say anything.

_“After_ , I'd assume. For the tissues to still be viable so many years after death, I'm willing to bet it’s a sample _I_ preserved. Think about it Dan: you created a clone out of tissue saturated with the reagent.”

“What’s your point?” Dan said tersely.

Herbert gestured. “Well...that practically makes her my daughter too, doesn’t it?”

Dan let out a shot of startled laughter. “You’re kidding—”

Herbert spoke over him. “You know I'm right Dan, she’s the product of _our_ research—”

“—you’re really having a pissing contest over Meg—”

“—I need to study her, I need to see how the tissue reacts to being saturated with the reagent from birth—”

“Hey fellas.”

Both men jumped. At the door, Julian Lambrick stood with arms crossed, flanked by two large men with handguns who looked like they had little to no tolerance for nonsense..

“Shit, he heard us.”

“Yeah, we heard you, people in space heard you.” Julian said, smirking. “Boy oh boy, I thought taking over for pops was going to be boring. How wrong I was.”

Dan tensed. 

“And don’t bother. Men: pat him down, I’m sure he’s got a gun or something.”

‘Or something’ turned out to be a taser, bear mace, three fold-out knives, and an epipen loaded with tranquilizer.

Hebert looked impressed.

“Hey, I came prepared,” Dan shrugged. His hands were shaking.

Julian looked over a sheath of papers, whistling low. _“Too important to be distilled down into mere words,_ you dog. You didn’t tell me you were running a cloning program.”

“That’s because I'm not,” Dan mumbled.

Julian cupped a hand behind his ear. “Oh I'm sorry, is this the ‘Lambrick Foundation for throwing money at random things’? No? Oh _that’s_ right, it’s the ‘Lambrick Friggin’ Genetic Institute’. Which _you_ work for. I own you.”

“Yay capitalism,” Herbert said dryly.

Julian turned on him. “And just who the hell are you?”

“I’m a syringe salesman.” Julian did not meet many people who were completely unaffected by his presence. Herbert looked at him like a fly in the lab, a mild but momentarily tolerated nuisance. The Lambrick heir was visibly unnerved.

“Well doctor Crawford or whatever your real name is—I'll have it soon enough—no more of this skirting around the issue. The Lambrick foundation has a lot of use for a guy like you.”

“No it doesn’t,” Dan said flatly, “human cloning is illegal, and there are no practical applications for it right now anyway.”

Julian nodded, tongue flicking over his incisors as he smiled. “Maybe not, but you know what does have practical applications? Knives. You can apply them practically anywhere. Eyes, hands, scalps...a young girl’s face...”

Dan tensed.

“Ah, the soft approach.” Herbert deliberately yawned and looked at his watch. “Well, if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I have better things to do.”

He stood, and was immediately pushed back down by guards. Julian frowned at him.

“Who are you? You look familiar.”

“I supposed you’ve read about the Miskatonic massacre?”

Julian’s face was blank.

“Miskatonic university?” Herbert prodded, “Massachusetts?”

Julian shook his head.

“Well, now I just feel old.”

“Look,” Dan broke in, “he’s an old acquaintance, just dropped by at the wrong time, he came snooping after I had to leave home suddenly. He was just being helpful, he has nothing to do with anything.”

Julian looked at Herbert, who looked innocently up at the ceiling.

“Yeah, and I have a bridge I'd like to sell you,” he said. He flicked his pointer finger lazily at the two of them. “Have them up against the wall and, umm, shoot them if they move funny.”

While Julian shuffled through papers, Dan and Herbert backed against the wall. The guards kept a hand on their guns at all times, no doubt they were fast draws who could shoot a coin at fifty paces. Lambrick didn’t cheap out on security.

“Well, this is another fine mess you’ve gotten us into,” Dan said in an Oliver Hardy voice.

“I think you can only place part of the blame on my shoulders this time, Daniel.”

“Oh no, I'm blaming you for the whole damn mess. I’m blaming you for stuff that didn’t even happen while you were here,” Dan said, “when I stubbed my toe last week? Your fault. My uncle Ernie getting into that car crash? All you. I’m ready to pin the Titanic on you, that’s how pissed I am right now.”

“Look, I think we can both agree this could have been avoided if I had left you tied up.”

“Oh really? Well how much could have been avoided if _you_ had stayed tied up?”

Julian paused in his actions, giving them both an odd look.

“What?” Herbert deadpanned.

Julian shook his head and got back to it.

“I mean it,” Dan said, “every time I think I got my life back together, you pop up and spoil things.”

_“I haven’t even seen you in almost thirty years!”_

“Yeah,” Dan snapped, “but you’re still _there,_ aren’t you? I can never get comfortable because I know you’ll come after me, because you can never just let things go.”

“I can too!”

“There’s a severed head in a crypt somewhere that would beg to differ.”

“That second time was on Graves, he’s the idiot who brought him back!”

“Oh yeah? And why didn’t you just cremate the head when you found him sitting on a shelf?”

Herbert stopped. He sputtered the start of a few words, but fell silent.

“Didn’t occur to you for a single second.”

“I—was—busy! I had just made that breakthrough with the amniotic fluid and then you dropped that bomb about wanting to abandon our work—”

“—see, this is what I'm talking about! It’s never your fault, is it? You have no sense of personal responsibility, you only apologize to placate people—”

“Oh my god, shut up!” Julian stood, papers crumpled in each fist. “Jesus, you’re like an old sitcom couple or something.” 

The two men fell silent.

Julian held his hands up, squeezing his eyes shut as if it was all just too much. “Look, I'm going to google the Miskatonic massacre, and if it turns out it’s something I care about then maybe— _maybe_ —I let you live long enough to regret crossing me.”

Herbert laughed. Dan put his hands over his eyes.

Julian snapped his gaze over to Herbert. “Something funny?” he said, spitting a bit as he spoke.

“My goodness, you really are out of your depth, aren’t you?” Herbert said in that cloying way he had.

“Herbert, shut the hell up,” Dan muttered.

Julian turned fire engine red, stabbing a pointer finger at Herbert’s face. “Watch what you say to me, pig! I don’t take any lip from insignificant specks like you.”

Herbert chuckled again. “I’ve trifled with dictators that make you look like a preschooler, what possible threat do you think you pose?”

Julian got redder. “Oh what, you think you’re hard? I’ll have my man pull your teeth out and then feed them back to you.”

Continuing his streak of doing exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time, Herbert stifled a fake yawn. Then he pulled off his glasses and buffed them on his shirt.

“Sergio Martinez threatened something similar,” he said in a casual drawl, “only—he spiced it up a bit. Threatened to put the teeth through the other end.”

Julian squinted. “Sergio—was he a dictator?”

“For about three hours, yes.” Herbert donned his glasses again. “His end was...messy. A shame, he kept the supply of subjects flowing to me, right up until the end.”

Julian’s face twisted in confusion. He did not know what to make of Herbert. He held up a finger and turned, taking a phone as slim as a piece of paper from his pocket. He tapped a few things on the screen and read for a moment, mouth moving.

Dan looked at Herbert, smug as anything, and sighed.

Julian finally turned around. “Herbert. That makes you Herbert west?”

Herbert did a little mock-curtsy.

Julian’s eyes traveled to Dan’s face. “That would make you Mr. Daniel Cain. Hello.”

“Thanks,” Dan said sarcastically to Herbert. Herbert smirked back.

Julian lowered his phone. “So this means...what? I’m seeing lobotomies, severed heads, dead people coming back to life. Give me bullet points.”

Herbert sighed, looking for all the world like a disappointed teacher. “Daniel and I had been perfecting a serum that restores the dead to life.”

Julian’s eyes lit up with greed. “Now we’re talking.”

“Herbert—”

Herbert waved him down. 

Julian walked closer to them. “I want it, and I want your full cooperation.”

Dan moved forward, and was pushed back by the guards. “No—”

“Speak when you’re spoken to,” Julian snapped. He turned to Herbert. “I want you to work for us. We’ll keep you supplied with dead bodies, live bodies, whatever. But your research belongs to the Lambrick company.”

“Of course,” Herbert said casually.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's my personal headcanon that Herbert went back to South America after escaping the prison: plenty of civil unrest so his body-snatching shenanigans would go unnoticed. I haven't decided how his NPE research has gone, because I still haven't gotten my hands on a copy of _Beyond_ and it's the one DVD netflix doesn't have in stock. oh well.


	5. A Live Demonstration

“Of course,” Herbert said casually, “you’ll want a demonstration, won’t you? I mean, talk is all well and good, but physical evidence is the backbone of science.”

Julian shifted his weight, chewing his lower lip. He had expected instant capitulation and Herbert’s hesitation threw him.

Dan shook his head. “I can’t believe this. I actually cannot—you can’t seriously be considering his offer!”

Herbert gave him a mild look. “Why? You jealous?”

Dan let out a guffaw that was half laugh, half sob. “No, Herbert, I'm not jealous, I'm furious. All you ever talked about was how much you hated authority, and you’re seriously thinking of giving the reagent to this asshole?”

“Shut up, pig!” Julian snarled. 

“No, Dan, I’m thinking of  _ coming to work  _ for this asshole,” Herbert said, raising his eyebrows a bit, “and enjoying fully stocked facilities in exchange for my cooperation. Just because you continuously bite the hand that feeds you—

“—oh you’re one to talk, you hypocrite—”

“—doesn’t mean I will let your antiquated morality keep me from following the example set by our great friend and mentor, Dr. Carl Hill.”

Dan’s mouth fell open and stayed there.

Herbert turned to Julian, oozing smarm. “Shall we take this to a proper lab where I can demonstrate my work?”

Julian smirked. “We shall.”

The labs at the clinic were clean as a whistle, possibly cleaner. Herbert gazed with envy over the neat surroundings. How many jungles had he labored in, how many tent “hospitals” had he fought flies and bacteria for the lives of his patients?

Julian rolled a desk chair over and sat down. One guard had come with them, dutifully pointing a gun at Herbert. The other stayed with Dan.

Julian spread his hands. “Well?”

Herbert fetched a bottle of adenosine from the cupboard. “I have to assemble my formula. It takes time.”

“How much time?” Julian rocked the chair back and forth with his toe like an impatient child. “I’ve got other things I could be doing.”

Herbert uncapped an ampoule and inserted a needle. “Think of it this way: the time you invest now will pay off later.”

“No, I'll think of it this way: either you impress me or I'll have my men shoot you in the head and feed you to dogs.”

Herbert swirled chemicals in a beaker, chuckling slightly. “Forceful. I like it. You set a lot of stock in your family’s influence, don’t you?”

Julian sucked air over his teeth. “Well, we’re literally rich enough to buy our own state, so yeah.” He gave an arrogant little head bob.

Herbert dropped the mixture into a jar, covering it quickly as white vapor billowed up. He uncovered it just long enough to drop a cloth in, capping it while trying not to breathe any of the escaping mist. “You ever hear the phrase ‘money isn’t everything’?”

“I have. Always makes me laugh.”

“Well, you should put more thought into it. You see that there?” Herbert pointed at a wall behind their heads. Julian turned for a brief second.

“What, that painting?”

Hebert rolled his eyes. “No, the other thing.”

This time both men turned to look. Herbert soundlessly took the cloth from the jar.

“What, there’s nothing else on that wall—”

Herbert clamped the cloth to the bodyguard’s mouth and nose. His other hand gripped the gun as the flailing man pulled the trigger, firing uselessly into the ground. 

Julian squealed like a pig with a pinched tail, shoving back with his feet so the chair hit the wall and bounced. The bodyguard made a choking noise as he went into cardiac arrest. He convulsed and slid to the floor, Herbert keeping the cloth pressed to his face until he stopped moving.

“Guard! Guard, get in here!”

Herbert retrieved the gun and pistol-whipped Julian. The Lambrick heir threw his hands over his bloody mouth, muffling his screams. 

Herbert dashed down the hall. He heard “freeze!” behind him and dodged left and right down the hall. A bullet zinged past his head, shattering the glass door. Herbert jumped through the jagged hole and continued running. His plan was to lead the guard into the brush that surrounded the clinic’s neat patch of lawn but, as the old saying went: no plan ever survived contact with the enemy.

Lambrick’s remaining guard took cover behind a trash can, sending shots after Herbert’s retreating figure. The guard had probably received extensive firearms training, while Herbert was limited to what little he picked up to stay alive. He was just weighing his options when a car sped through the yard, slamming into the trash can and by extension the guard. The man was tossed like a ragdoll.

Herbert popped his head out of cover.

Meg rolled down the passenger window. “Um, did that help?”

Herbert frowned, picking his way carefully through the brush. “I suppose. Hold on a moment.”

The guard was still alive, twitching. Herbert rolled down his eyelids, checked his pulse. Probably massive internal damage. He would not remain viable for long.

Herbert leaned in the car window. “Stay in the car. I’ll be back momentarily.”

He picked his way silently through the broken glass of the clinic’s front. From the lab, he could hear Julian Lambrick alternate between swearing and screaming for his bodyguard. He tiptoed past to the office.

“Well, Dan, I—” he stopped.

Dan was chalk-faced, clamping his hand to a bloodstain at his side. “Took you long enough,” he whispered. His grin was like a death grimace.

Herbert dropped the gun and raced over. “Dan.  _ Dan?” _ He pressed his hands to the wound.

Dan looked at him, wincing. “Listen, about Meg—”

“Don’t talk.” Herbert grabbed a spare shirt that hung on the office door and made Dan press it to the wound.

“I need to tell you what to do about her—”

“Shh!” He positioned Dan’s hands to maximize pressure. “Can you stand? I need you to walk.” Dan stood before briefly sliding back down. Herbert growled in frustration. “I’ll be right back.”

 

Meg was examining the prone guard, nudging him with her foot. Herbert strode angrily to her, yanking her by the arm. “What did I say? Stay in the car, that was the one thing I asked!”

“But I thought he was dead,” Meg blurted as he pulled her down the hallway.

“Rule #1: never assume someone’s dead.” Herbert released her into the room. Meg took one look at her father and blanched.

Herbert knelt by Dan’s side. “Listen to me very carefully: think of your father like a hose that’s sprung a leak. I need you to keep constant pressure over the hole, otherwise all the water will run out. Do you understand?”

Meg knelt, putting trembling hands to her father’s side. Herbert grabbed them and pushed.  _ “Hard. _ Like this. Don’t be afraid of hurting him, you’re holding the blood inside.”

“It’s okay baby.” Dan’s voice was a whisper. “You can do it.”

Meg buried her face in Dan’s neck, pressing her hands into his wound. Herbert regarded the scene for a minute before nodding. “I’ll get supplies from the lab. He’s going to be alright.”

 

Julian Lambrick peered around the lab doorway. His face flew into panic as Herbert met him, gun-first. 

“No! No!” he backed away, hands up, babbling. “I-I can get you money, I can get you whatever you want!”

“What I want?” Herbert considered him. “I want you to sit back down in that chair.”

Julian shook as he dropped into the chair. He obediently laid his arms on the arm rests. “O-okay, I've done it. Now what?”

The rip of medical tape made him jump.

“Now I want you to hold very, very still.”

 

Dan was breathing choppily when Herbert came back with medical supplies. Meg was crying.

“Herbert? What’s happening?”

Herbert got to his knees, uncapping a syringe. “He’s going into shock. Get this underneath him.” He handed her a clean cloth.

Dan didn’t even wince as the needle went in. “Jus’ promise me you won’ do anything t’ my corpse.”

Herbert clicked his tongue as he laid Dan out full. “Don’t be so dramatic.”

Meg sniffled, wiping her face. “Is there anything I should do?”

“Yes. Hand me the things I ask for in a moment.

Herbert stripped away Dan’s shirt and looked at the wound. 

Dan had always been the better doctor of the two. He remembered patient details, he was gentle, he was kind. He cared.

But Herbert had always been the better surgeon.

He took a deep breath and let everything else fall away. He viewed the body like a watchmaker looking at a timepiece: this went here, this clicked into that. The human body was a puzzle to be disassembled and put back together infinitely.

Herbert worked quickly, but he didn’t rush. He had to repeat instructions a few times for Meg, who tried to be a good nurse despite the circumstances. She watched with horrified fascination as Herbert sewed up her father.

“Aren’t you going to take the bullet out?”

“That’s actually a bad idea,” Herbert said as he drew a nearly-invisible stitch. “The bullet is acting as a stopper for the wound, taking it out would exaggerate the injury. We have to get Dan to a place where he can be on bedrest before I can truly work on him. This is merely a temporary fix.”

He looked up at Meg as he tied the suture off. “This is what’s going to happen now: we are going to confine ourselves to one car. I’ll assume your father has some kind of go-bag packed in his trunk?”

Meg nodded.

“I thought so. In that case, we abandon yours in an urban area, after emptying it. You can say it was stolen, should anyone ask. We are not going back to your house tonight, probably not for a long time. We are going to drive your father to a motel that takes cash and hole up there for a while. You will help me get him into the car, and then we will enact our plan. Understand?”

Meg nodded again.

“Good.” Herbert looked at Dan. The sedative had taken effect, now Dan’s face was peaceful as if he were napping. He realized he’d left his hand resting just below the wound and pulled it back hastily. 

“I need to take some supplies for the operation,” he said, avoiding Meg’s gaze, “and then I'm going to have you drive your father to the dam road. There you will park and wait for me. I’ll take care of the other car.”

Dan folded up awkwardly in the back seat. Herbert buckled him in as best he could, pillowing his head with a folded towel. 

“Try not to hit any speedbumps,” he said as he closed the door gently. Meg gripped the steering wheel and stared straight ahead. Herbert buckled the passenger-side belt around the chest of medical supplies he had thrown together.

“Are you good to drive?” he asked, snapping Meg out of it. She swallowed.

“Um, yeah.”

“Good. Obey speed limits, signal turns, do everything you can not to attract attention. Drive like your grandmother’s in the car.”

“My grandmother’s dead,” Meg retorted.

Herbert smiled. “Still applies. Now go. I’ve got work to do.” 

He watched Meg negotiate the curves of the clinic’s long and winding driveway, pressing his lips into a firm line. Then he went back inside the building.

Julian thrashed around in the office chair, futilely trying to twist his way out of the tape. He flinched back as Herbert wheeled a defibrillator into the room. 

“My father’s going to be very upset when he hears about this,” Julian rasped, voice dulled from screaming. “It can go either way. I can make sure he rewards you for my safe return. You won’t like the alternative.”

“Is that so?” Herbert asked in a bored tone. He fiddled with the defibrillator, shortening wires, changing connection. He attached one set of wire ends to a small glass object that looked almost like a lightbulb.

“Yes. My father once had a man disappeared for shoving past me on the street.”

“Really?” Herbert murmured as he set electrodes on Julian’s clammy forehead. “My father once threatened to drive into oncoming traffic unless I proclaimed that he was god. Parents can be so melodramatic.”

Real fear crept into Julian’s eyes. “I c-can—I can—”

“You can’t, Julian, not right now. You can’t do anything.” Herbert disappeared briefly, returning with a small cloth bag. It was full of similar glass bottles to the one in the machine, but they crackled with greenish energy. “I realize that helplessness must be a new experience for you. You strike me as a man who could use some new perspective.” Herbert mused through the bottles like a man choosing a fine wine.

Julian squirmed. “No, ah, I'm fine. Really, whatever you’re going to do, I've learned the error of my ways, okay? We don’t need to—” he dissolved into tearful babbling as Herbert flicked on the defibrillator.

Herbert smiled benevolently down at Julian. “Now, as the nurse told me when I got my very first shot: this will just be a quick pinch, but you’ll feel it for the rest of your life.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally managed to track down a much-diminished copy of _Beyond_ and lemme tell ya, being filtered through several copyright-avoiding filters actually improved my viewing experience. Yeesh.  
> I'm always kind of split on NPE. On one hand it's a logical culmination of Herbert's god complex, but on the other hand it's way too on-the-nosey of a plot twist for me. I will be using it as a continual plot device, though, so hunker down and get cozy.  
> Personal headcanon: it was always my impression that Herbert grew up in a strict and possibly religiously abusive household. Hence his complete lack of social skills and just...general fuckery when it comes to human relationships. He has little to no idea what a healthy relationship looks like, and clings to Dan because he's the first person he was able to connect with outside of Gruber.


	6. The road trip episode

Herbert kicked the motel door open. “Put the cloth on the bed. Check for bedbugs first.”

Meg frowned at the twin mattress. It looked like it had been made sometime back in the Reagan era and then never slept in. “how can I tell if there’s bedbugs?”

“Reddish-brown grit about the size of coffee grounds,” Herbert said as he took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. “The bedbug itself is flat and oval, smaller than your pinky nail.”

When he came back, lugging Dan on a makeshift sledge, Meg had stripped the bedclothes and left the mattress bare. 

“Cloth,” he nodded.

Meg flapped the clean white surgical cover over the bed, smoothing it over the corners. With her help, Herbert lifted Dan onto the bed. Dan’s face twisted slightly as they jostled his injury, but remained unconscious.

Now that that was done Meg stood with her arms folded, looking unsure. Herbert snapped his fingers to get her attention. 

“I need you to stay alert tonight. Can you do that?”

“Yeah, if you stop snapping at me,” Meg said.

Herbert sighed through his nose. “Fantastic. You’ll need to assist me as I operate on your father one more time. Then you should get some rest. Living on the run will take it out of you.” he turned and opened the latch on the medical chest.

Meg looked over at the other bed, still covered. “There’s only two beds.”

“So?”

“Where will you sleep?”

“I don’t,” Herbert said, rummaging through his medical supply. He’d overdone it, but he couldn’t name the last time he’d been so close to such a smorgasbord.

Meg sat gingerly on the edge of the other bed, tucking her hands into her hoodie pocket. “What, like, ever?”

Herbert frowned. He missed solitude. “I take a 45-minute nap approximately every 3 days. Besides that no, I don’t require sleep.”

“Are you, like, a robot?”

Herbert sighed angrily. “No.”

“Are you on meth?”

_“No.”_ Herbert turned to regard her. “I need to think. Please keep your questions to yourself.”

He got five glorious seconds of silence. Then: “so... why do you hate my dad?”

Herbert rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses. “I don’t hate your father. I’m trying to save his life, do you mind?”

“Hey, I'm alone in a hotel room with a complete stranger, I mind.”

Herbert shot her a disinterested look. _“Please.”_

Meg slid her feet out and leaned back on the bed. After a few minutes he heard the jangly electronic beeps of a mobile game. “Phone off.”

“I’m bored.”

“You’re trackable. Phone off or I'm taking it.”

Meg heaved a mighty sigh and hit the power button. “You’re a barrel of fun, you know that?”

“I didn’t get into medical school to be _fun_ ,” Herbert snapped. “Are you fifteen or five? You can’t go a few minutes without constant noise and distraction?”

“I”m stressed and I'm bored, don’t you know what that’s like?”

“I used to have to copy the dictionary when I showed a single inkling of boredom,” Herbert said, tearing the wrapper from some sterile gauze. He stopped for a moment, setting his shoulders. “If you _must_ be entertained, the television remote is over there.”

Glorious silence as Meg went to fetch the remote, and then the electronic buzz as she turned on the old rabbit-eared TV.

_“...abandoned by the Stillwater ranch, police found the vehicle to contain—”_

Meg switched it to a channel hawking tacky rhinestone jewelry. Herbert labored up from his position on the floor.

“Wait! Change it back!”

Meg frowned, but complied. The news channel was replaying helicopter footage shot earlier in the day, policemen stalked over an empty wheat field, guns drawn, to an ADT van parked by an old outhouse. They gave exaggerated pantomime shouts and pointed as the van rocked on its springs. Herbert watched grimly.

“My god,” he said, “they’ve found Fido.”

“Fido?” Meg asked.

With a final lurch, the van doors burst open, and a...something burst out. Its body was configured like a dog, its tongue lolled from its mouth like a brainless canine, but it was a man. Or rather, it was an ugly, thick man’s head stuck on a stubby torso, with legs attached at the shoulders and hips to make it quadrupedal. It leapt, slobbering furiously, wagging the fleshy stub attached to its posterior. One of the policemen vomited. 

Meg looked at Herbert, who tried not to look guilty.

_“What?”_

Meg just shook her head and changed the channel.

 

Four in the morning. Meg slumbered on the unmade bed, tucked into the protective shell of her hoodie. Herbert thought to himself as he mixed chemicals. Could he get away with drawing a little blood? He could perhaps numb the area so that the prick of a syringe wouldn’t wake her, and then begin the first in a series of tests to determine what effect the reagent had on her tissue…

Herbert turned and found Dan staring at him.

“Dan,” he blurted, “you’re awake.”

Dan blinked. “Been.”

Herbert bent to the medical chest. “I’ll get you some more sedative.”

“No, Herbert, it’s fine.”

“It is not fine, you need to sleep.”

“Oh, so I'll be rested up when you kill me?” a smile played around Dan’s lips, and only there. His gaze was deep and sorrowful and weary. 

Herbert rolled his eyes. “For the last time, I'm not going to kill you. Not when you’re like this.”

“So you have morals all the sudden? Herbert West not taking advantage of someone when they’re down? That’s a first.” Dan coughed a little.

Herbert gave him a scathing look. “I _am_ capable of modifying my behavior, Daniel. I’m not some kind of science automaton. I understand the value of people. Why do you think I was so hellbent on keeping you around in the first place? You _seemed_ to understand what I was doing, and I think on some level you still do. Killing you would bring me no pleasure whatsoever.”

“Don’t get all gushy on me, I forgot my hanky.”

Herbert made an irritated noise in his throat. “Look, I'll admit it: I was angry. Furious. I’d been planning my confrontation with you for years. Do you know how long that lasted?”

“How long?”

“Until I saw you again.” Herbert sat on the bed by Meg’s feet, holding his hands out as if weighing invisible objects. “I was hit with a rush of...do you know what it’s like to live like I do, Dan? I’ve never _gone bac_ k to anything. No place I've left has ever stayed the same. But I saw you again after all this time and...nostalgia. That was it. It was _familiar,_ Dan. Seeing you put me back all those years to Miskatonic, back when medical science was exciting and new. It does get lonely being a pariah, Dan.”

Dan smiled. “Thanks. I almost believe you.”

Herbert stood, indignant. “I meant that,” he sputtered. He thought he did, anyway.

But Dan just shook his head. “You’d say anything if it got me to help you. I know you.”

“What, you’re saying I forced you into everything?” Herbert folded his arms. “I don’t recall twisting your arm to get you to build...her.”

“No,” Dan said in a level tone, “but you got me when I was in the throes of PTSD after having my girlfriend die in my arms—twice—and then you took me to a battlefield that exacerbated the condition. You knew all the buttons to push to get me to help you, because you put them there.”

Herbert couldn’t come up with any outright denial. He scowled and stalked back over to the medicine chest, burying himself in labels.

“I’ve had years of therapy, Herbert, and it’s taught me a lot. I got over Meg’s death a long time ago, so I'm sorry to say you lost your biggest hold over me. My daughter isn’t a tragic memento, she’s a celebration of life. I’ve grown since I last saw you.”

“And I haven’t?” Herbert asked testily.

“Well, in certain ways, yes. In other ways, no.”

“Ah, the mathematician's answer.”

“I mean, you’ve always had this part of you that’s like a gleefully violent little boy, but you’ve…” Dan shifted on the bed, grunting with effort. “You’re different now. Less weaselly.”

“Thank you.”

“I mean you’re less afraid of physical risk. Cooler under pressure. You’ve gotten ballsier.”

“I’ll chose to take that as a complement.”

Dan’s smile looked pained. “You can just shoot me full of morphine anytime you’re tired of me.”

Herbert’s finger circled the lid of a bottle of warfarin. “...no. Keep talking.”

“Your edges have softened. You were nice to Meg.”

“Well maybe I just wanted a spare set of hands for grave robbing,” Herbert said sarcastically.

“No, I mean before that. The way you talked to her before you operated on me.”

A frown line appeared between Herbert’s eyebrows. “How was that nice? I was ordering her around.”

“You took the time to explain things to her, and you comforted her.”

“I did?”

“You said, ‘ _he’s going to be alright.’_ ”

“That’s-that’s just what you say.”

“No, that’s what other doctors say. Your bedside manner has always been a little more on the brisk side.”

Herbert looked down at the bottles, seeing but not seeing them. “Dan ...what is she? Is she just a clone of Meg? Or is she a result of the reagent? I need to know.”

“Why, because you want credit for her?” Dan shifted. “Or because you want to know at least one thing you’ve made hasn’t gone mad or tried to kill you?”

Silence.

“I might want that shot now.”

Herbert filled a syringe and brought it to where Dan had rolled his sleeve up.

“Be gentle, it’s my first time,” he joked. 

Herbert smiled, despite himself. “Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

“Shit, there are bedbugs?” Dan looked around groggily, fighting sleep until he finally let his head fall back on the pillow. Herbert remained seated on the bed beside him for some time.

 

“So you’re saying the human soul—”

“—chemical equivalent of the soul—”

“—Okay, _the chemical equivalent of the soul_ looks like green electricity, and you’ve somehow figured out how to extract it?”

“In so many words, yes.”

“Cow, one point,” Meg said.

“...that sounds really far fetched. I mean I'm really having trouble believing you here.”

“Dan, you’ve seen that consciousness resides in every limb, every cell of the body. Why is this such a leap?”

“Because it is. The biological process of life is one thing, but you’re saying someone’s morality, their entire way of being, can be distilled into a bottle?”

“Not exactly _distilled_ , but yes.”

“Horse. Five points.”

“I guess I just can’t wrap my head around it.” Dan leaned his forehead on the window. “Four cows. Four points.”

“One’s a calf.”

“Still counts.

“Cow on my side.” Meg unwrapped a burner phone, the kind favored by drug dealers. Of course it was bubblegum pink. “One point.”

Dan was chewing on some jerky, having already unwrapped his phone. “Mule. That’s 20.”

“Daddy, that’s a goat.”

“What, you expect me to believe a city-slicker like you knows the difference between a mule and a goat?” 

“That is so a goat!” Meg craned her neck to take a second look, and Dan blocked her with his torso. This escalated to a giggling wrestle match that only ended when Meg accidentally bumped her father’s gunshot wound. 

“Settle down back there.” Herbert seethed in the driver’s seat. Perhaps the indignity of “cow poker” would have been easier to bear if he hadn’t been the only one driving since dawn. 

Dan shifted, repositioning the stolen motel pillow that stood between his body and the door. 

“So what does that mean for science?” he asked. “What’s the practical application of something like that?”

“In a word? Limitless.” 

“No, really. Give it to me in quantifiable terms.” 

Herbert frowned. “Well, we’ll be able to save lives in totality. You could extract the soul from a dying person and incorporate it into a reanimated body.”

“And what about other personality?”

“Hmm?” Herbert squinted as he navigated a hairpin turn. 

“The one in the original body.”

Herbert didn’t answer right away. His adam’s apple bobbed.

“Those tests are...still in progress.”

“I’ll bet they are,” Dan said smugly. 

Herbert glared at him as they pulled off into yet another motel.

Meg looked up from her newest electronic distraction. “Is that what you did with Fido?”

Dan blinked. “Who’s Fido?”

“Nothing,” Herbert snapped, “now let’s get a room so we can get you laid down again.”

“I bet you say that to all the girls.” 

Herbert’s ears reddened as he slammed the car door. He was halfway across the parking lot when a police cruiser rolled in. Herbert immediately tried not to walk suspiciously, which naturally had the opposite effect.

The cop car rolled closer, the driver lowered his window. “Hey, sir? You alright?”

Hunched facing away from the cop, Herbert nodded stiffly.

“Hey!”

Both turned at the sound.

Dan stuck his head cheekily out the back window. “Please ask if they have complimentary spa sandals, honey. My feet are killing me after all this driving.”

Herbert gave him a dumbfounded look. The cop took an amused glance at the both of them.

“You’re doing the smart thing, tired driving kills. Have a good night, folks.”

Herbert nodded again, shuffling to the motel office. He risked one backward glance. Dan winked at him.

Herbert pushed into the motel, seething. The next few days were just going to _fly_ by.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one was kind of a breather in-between action scenes, sorry there's not a whole lot beside talking.


	7. Playing House

Four  motels, five days, and three license-plate swaps later, Herbert and the others stood before a stately McMansion.

Dan shut his door, putting a hand to his injured side. “You sure it’s empty?”

“I installed the security system. I know they’ve gone on vacation. This house is currently owned by a consortium of several young men in their twenties who are convinced that they are going to strike it rich by growing marijuana.”

Dan blinked. “....do they know it’s legal in this state?”

“Oh yes. It’s not even the least hairbrained part of their scheme.”

“What’s the next phase, paper umbrellas?”

“Investing the profit back in digital currency.”

Dan startled into a snort-laugh. Meg looked up to the house, grinding the toe of her shoe into the dirt.

Herbert found the alarm and disabled it, opening the front door with a spare key cunningly hidden in plain sight.

“I hope someday I'm rich enough to be this dumb.”

“How does the saying go?  _ Long on money and short on sense?” _

As Meg went into the house, Dan held Herbert back with a grip on his upper arm.

“Herbert, she doesn’t know. About any of it.”

“Fine,” Herbert snapped. He couldn’t budge.

“I mean that. Meg is a normal teenage girl, and my daughter. I will go to the ends of the earth to protect her.” Dan gave him a long, still look.

“Dan, I get it.” Herbert tried not to sound like a sullen teenager, which was hard when he was being treated as such.

Dan finally let go. He indicated the doorway with a hand, but Herbert remained petulantly in place. Dan entered the house with a shrug. Herbert took one last look at the surrounding hills before closing the door behind him.

Meg was going up the stairs two at a time.“I’m going to go pick out my room. Then I’ll let you pick which half of the couch to sleep on.”

Dan snagged her and ruffled her hair, earning a screaming giggle. “Not on your life, Megatron. We have to sift through, see if there’s any kind of hidden camera to disable. I’m betting at least one of these guys has a setup to film their, um,  _ nightly escapades. _ ”

Meg squirmed out of his grip. “I told you not to call me that.”

“And? I’m your dad, I get to call you whatever I want or I'll have all your Neopets killed.”

Meg rolled her eyes. “Daddy, no one’s even thought about Neopets since 2010.”

“So it’s a mercy killing then.”

“Dan,” Herbert broke in, stepping on the family moment, “I'll be taking my things down to the basement.”

Dan sighed. “Naturally.”

“Why the basement? Are you cooking meth?” Meg had what Herbert considered an unfairly eager glee in her eyes. 

Herbert frowned. “No, I'll be distilling a few different compounds for my work. I’ll need the privacy and the space.”

“Well that’s the basement. What about the kitchen?” Meg paced to the room that could have housed an entire medieval feast. The stove top was dotted with spilled pizza pocket grease. A line of pans hung over it, pristine as the day they’d been unwrapped save for one sauce pan that had a burnt sugary crust on the bottom. The refrigerator front was an LED screen that indicated it held several cans of Monster, a bottle of Sriracha, and nothing else.

Meg frowned. “A smart fridge and nothing in it.”

“There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.” Dan smiled. “Don’t worry, we can go to the market I saw back in town and pick up some things.”

“Use cash, not credit.” Herbert looked in cupboards and drawers for tools he could repurpose.

“Oh yes, thank you, I was about to whip out my company card to buy half a stick of gum,” Dan said, dripping with sarcasm. He turned to Meg and indicated with a flip of his head. “Come on. Bags out, then we shop.”

Herbert held a glass in his hand, watching the reflections of father and daughter exit the room with his mouth pressed into a thin line. Then and only then did he fill the cup with water and down it again.

In the basement, he flicked a switch and a line of full-spectrum bulbs lit up three rows of marijuana plants. The drip irrigation system had failed on two rows and the plants were crispy. Herbert swept them off without ceremony and pushed tables together to make a lab space. He cobbled together an odd assortment of glassware that would do for the most part. But there was nothing that could replace a distillation setup, and he could not produce the reagent without it.

Herbert tapped a pen on his teeth. The nearest town had only a smattering of big box stores, offset by several bars and antique shops. Probably nothing that carried lab-quality borosilicate glass. He had several caches with reagent hidden throughout the state, but nearly all of them were more than a day’s drive away. 

But even putting the whole reagent problem aside, he desperately needed proper lab equipment. A centrifuge. A blood analyzer. He needed to get a sample of Meg’s DNA and test it, and all of it under Dan’s nose.

Herbert let his eyes drift upwards. Dan was insistent that Meg believe she was nothing other than a normal girl, for all the value that had, and Herbert was not about to press that. When Dan was in a good mood he tended to interfere less. Or at least, that’s how he  _ had  _ been. Herbert had to remind himself that Dan had changed in the intervening years, had gotten wilier and less prone to acting on emotional instinct. He found himself slipping into the old patterns again and again because Dan did the same. 

But it wasn’t the same, not any more.

Dan was no longer an ally. Dan was a potential threat or resource, but Herbert had to finally confront the fact that they no longer inhabited the same side. Any mutually beneficial actions were purely incidental.

A knock startled him. Herbert looked up from the vacant spot he’d been staring at for an interminable length of time, to find Dan on the stairs. He held a cardboard box clumsily in one arm, having shifted it to knock.

“I know you hate being disturbed when you’re working,” he said, “but, ah, I poked around town to see if I could find any lab supplies, and, well, the secondhand store had half the glassware from the school’s old science department. There’s no erlenmeyer flasks, but it’s better than a shot glass.”

Herbert’s mouth dropped open slightly. He couldn’t think of a thing to say.

Dan gently put the box on a nearby table. “Come on, it’s time you tried some of the patented Cain veggie burgers. I’m cooking from scratch tonight, probably the first time that’s happened in this house.”

Herbert found his voice. “I’ll be up in a minute.”

“Good. I'll try to keep Meg from inhaling all the food.”

Herbert waited until he heard Dan’s footsteps on the floor above before opening the box. A disused bunsen burner, some beakers and flasks, and, miracle of miracles, a small vacuum setup for distillation.

He blinked.

 

Meg kicked her feet, jarring the table she sat on with her kinetic motion. It was the kind of action that barely made any sound but managed to be as vexing as a persistent biting fly. Herbert struggled to split his attention between the task at hand and the invader to his lab. 

“So what is that, the stuff you find in glow sticks?” Meg asked. 

“Yes, I've discovered the secret formula and now I stand to make billions,” Herbert muttered. 

Meg shifted, pulling up one knee and hugging it to her. “No seriously, what is that? Is that...the stuff?”

“The stuff?” Herbert repeated back sardonically, “if by  _ stuff _ , you mean the  _ reagent _ , then yes. This is it.”

Meg frowned thoughtfully, tilting her head to look at it. “So what, it brings dead people back to life?”

“That’s a vast oversimplification, but yes. That is its main application. Lately I’ve branched out to studying its side applications.”

“Like what, fertilizing plants?”

Herbert scoffed. “Don’t you have a mall to hang out in?”

“Do they even make malls anymore?”

Herbert thought for a moment. “Touché.” 

“So what else does it do?”

“Oh,” Herbert said carefully as the lime green liquid filled the beaker, “lots of practical applications. Currently I'm studying the effect the reagent has on telomeres in cloned tissue.”

Meg looked as if he had just spouted a phrase in ancient Greek. “Who now?”

Herbert gave her an exasperated look. “Don’t tell me you don’t even know what telomeres are. Your father’s a doctor!”

“I know  _ of  _ them,” Meg said witheringly, “just...all of that together, what does it mean?”

Herbert put the reagent into a stoppered glass bottle, swirling it ever so slightly. It was good to be back. 

“Welllll,” he said, drawing the word out like a rubber band, “in excruciatingly simple terms, telomeres are the ends of chromosomes, they determine the life of your DNA. Now, in terms of cloning, what do you suppose would happen if you took tissue from a subject past their prime and inserted it into an egg?”

Meg’s mouth moved as she revisited various ignored biology lessons. “It...it would be old too, right?”

Herbert ticked a finger at her,  _ got it in one _ . “Telomeres shorten as you age. Clone a seventy-two-year-old into a baby, and they might have the same shelf life.”

“That’s horrible!”

“Ahh, but find a way to extend that shelf life…” Herbert palmed a syringe, “...and you have effectively hurtled one of the bigger barriers to cloning.”

Meg was engrossed in the green liquid as Herbert approached her. “Wow. I thought all it did was make crazy zombies. How are you going to study something like that?”

Herbert settled in beside her. “Well, you would need both donor tissue and the reagent, and you would need to test them in a laboratory environment.”

“How?”

“Oh, that’s the interesting part, you see that equipment over there?”

Meg leaned forward, squinting. “What, that flask?”

“No the other—” quick as a flash, Herbert stuck the needle in her arm and withdrew blood.

Meg let out a yelp and withdrew, clapping a hand to her forarm. “Ow, you psycho!”

“Oh there there, it wasn’t that bad,” Herbert said, smirking. “Here, for being such a good patient.”

He produced a chupa chup sucker. Meg looked him dead in the eye.

“I’m going to shove that up your ass.”

Herbert set it down, chuckling. “Well, if you’re against me borrowing tissue for the testing you can always go back upstairs and pester someone else.”

“Borrowing implies you asked, asshole.”

Herbert shrugged. “Well, thank you for your contributions to science anyway.”

Meg rubbed her arm, grimacing. “So why are you doing this?”

“Well, I need a fresh specimen for—”

“No, I mean why are you doing the whole thing? Why do you care? You are like the least sympathetic person I've ever met.”

Herbert frowned. “I’m trying to conquer the barrier of death, I should think that would be plenty sympathetic. If I win, it’s a net gain for humanity.”

“But you don’t really care about people. Not in general.”

Herbert arched his eyebrows at her. “I don’t care  _ for _ most people, no. But one does not have to have individual attachments to want the betterment of humanity.”

Meg had her chin in one hand, the other clamped on her wound. She was studying him. “So that’s how you get around it.”

“Get around what?”

“You don’t want to bother with other people’s feelings, but no one wants to admit they’re an asshole to themselves, so you tell yourself you’re doing stuff for their own good. You think being selfish is okay if you can write it off for a greater cause.”

Herbert frowned. This was getting a little introspective for his tastes. “Selfishness is a survival trait.”

“Is that all you ever want to do? Survive?”

Herbert looked at her. “As opposed to?”

“Living.” 

He snorted. “That’s your father talking.”

“That’s you not answering my question.” Meg shifted. “Would you even know what to do with yourself if you weren’t on the run? What would happen if you were in a perfectly supplied lab, lived in a nice house, and were surrounded with people who supported you? What would you do?”

Herbert looked up at nothing in particular, pondering. “Wither, I suppose. My talent thrives from opposition.”

Meg got up from the table, rolling her eyes. “I’ve heard that before. I’ll bet you only ever started essays the night before they were due, too.”

Herbert bent low over a beaker to escape admitting she had struck a nerve. Anyway, the papers got done on time, what right did anyone have to judge?

Meg paused at the end of the tables. Herbert noted she had palmed the sucker while he wasn’t looking. 

“Should I...tell dad? About this, I mean. He could help you.”

“He wouldn’t want to. Our partnership is long since dissolved and anyway,” He turned to her. “He turned state’s evidence against me. I spent years in prison because of your father. You can see why I would be leery of putting my trust in him again?”

Meg scuffed her shoe against the cement floor. “That’s...kind of sad to be honest.” She really did look sad at that. Herbert felt an odd twang.

“Yes, well…” he shrugged, looking away. 

Meg did not leave. Herbert worked on for some moments in near-silence. 

“...if you need more blood, you could just ask.”

Herbert turned to her, with a look of only slightly feigned surprise. 

“I mean, if it’s that important, I wouldn't mind every once in a while.” She put up a finger. “If you ask first.”

My my, he hadn't been expecting this. Meg wanted to  _ cooperate _ . More than that, she wanted to assist despite her father’s warnings and her own (admittedly earned) misgivings. Herbert allowed himself a moment’s childish daydreaming of  taking Meg on as an acolyte, alienating her father as Dan had alienated him. Meg was startlingly easier to get along with the more time he spent with her. He could, perhaps...

...of course would only prove Dan’s febrile mind right, and he couldn’t have that. Not even for such petty satisfaction.

Herbert nodded, businesslike. “I will. Go see to your father, will you? It’s time we changed his dressing.”

He watched Meg ascend the stairs.  _ What would you do if you lived in a nice house, surrounded by people who support you? _ He wasn’t sure, to be honest. Perhaps now was the time to find out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I watch and rewatch the commentaries for the first few movies, mining them for tidbits and inspiration, I really have to marvel at how awesome it is to hear Bruce Abbott and Jeffrey Combs discuss character motivation and soforth. One of my favorites is their debate about whether or not Herbert understands sexuality during the scene in _Bride_ where Dan beds Francesca and Herbert cobbles together a leg/arm monstrosity. It's not unlike discussions I've had with friends when we analyze movies and to hear a similar level of introspection from the people who made the movie, well, it just jellies my donut.


	8. Bonding Time

Herbert picked the edge of the medical tape with his fingernails.

“Be gentle, it’s my first time,” Dan joked.

Herbert groaned, as he had every other time Dan trotted out that joke.

They had fallen back into a comfortable rapport surprisingly quickly in a relatively short time. There was an edge there, certainly, but it was tempered with humor. From a far enough distance, you could mistake them for friends.

The bandage came away clean. The stitches could probably come out soon, provided Dan went easy on physical exertion. Herbert prepped the sterile gauze pad and tore more medical tape with his teeth, operating with the speed of a pit crew. He caught an amused leer from Dan as he set the strips in place.

“You’re getting pretty good at this. Ever considered a job in the medical industry?”

Herbert scowled and thrust the glasses further up the bridge of his nose. “I would, but the hours are murder.”

“Ha ha,” Dan intoned flatly, “ha ha ha. You’re very funny, mister West.”

“And you’re moving around too much, _mister_ Cain.” Herbert let his hand rest over the other scar, the line where the bayonet had plunged into his abdomen. “now if you keep getting holes in yourself, I'm going to have to ask you invest in a kevlar jacket.”

Dan’s eyes glittered with dark amusement. “Or maybe I should just stay away from you. Two times I've nearly ended up on the slab.”

Herbert made a peevish noise. “Oh yes, everything bad that happens to you is my fault. Mea culpa.”

“I’m just saying, I went twenty years without being shot at, then the same day you turn up…” Dan shrugged.

Hebert gave him a very unamused look.

“You boys play nice or I'm putting you on time out,” Meg said.

Herbert jumped a little. Meg appeared, leaning casually against the wall, hands tucked into her hoodie pockets. She smirked.

“So Meg tells me she’s been watching you work. Must be fun having a captive audience again.” Dan’s face was calm and clear, but there was a warning note in his voice.

“Yes,” Herbert said dryly, packing up his medical supplies, “she’s been a regular Marie Curie. She’ll have a ready career waiting in…” he looked to Meg.

“Fashion.”

Herbert squinted. He mouthed _‘fashion?’_ to Dan, who answered with a shrug.

Meg looked at him. “What? I like designing clothes, and I like making stuff.”

“Yes, but…” he looked back and forth from an amused-and-trying-to-hide-it Dan and an increasingly bemused Meg. “He’s, well…” he indicated Dan with an uncertain hand.

“Yeah, my dad’s a doctor. Doesn’t mean I have to be.” Meg shrugged and alighted from her place, apparently done with the conversation.

Herbert gave Dan a Look. Dan raised his eyebrows.

“You’re really not pushing her to the medical industry?”

“I see no reason why she can’t do the thing she loves. She can find a ready career in the industry, and she’s good at it.”

Herbert made a face like he’d just swallowed bitter medicine. “Oh I see, so she’ll just _marry_ a nice doctor then. My mistake, Mr. Halsey.”

Dan leaned his head back. “Hey honey, who are you going to marry?”

_“Whoever I damn well want to.”_

“Damn skippy,” Dan called back. He tilted his head back to look at Herbert smugly.

Herbert huffed. “Alright, fine, miss Meg can do whatever she wants. Pardon me for thinking of her future.”

“I don’t doubt you’re concerned about her future, your gender politics are just stuck in the last century, that’s all,” Dan said airily. “Why are you being so tetchy, anyway?”

Herbert rolled the cuffs down on his shirt. “Well, if you must know, I've been cooped up in here too long. I need to get out, get some supplies, take the lay of the land—”

“Go graverobbing?” Dan rested his chin in his hand. He smiled at Herbert’s scowl.

“I would like a new test subject, thanks,” Herbert snapped.

“I know,” Dan said, “how’s Meg been?”

Herbert hesitated. It seemed like a very loaded question.

“It’s been...interesting,” he said, “getting to know her. She really isn’t as much like her predecessor as I thought.”

“You mean she’s not in direct competition with you?”

Herbert sidestepped the comment. “I mean she’s got a stronger stomach. More...adventurous.”

“Good,” Dan said lightly, moving to button his shirt. He’d left it open for a long time, Herbert realized. “Then you won’t mind taking her with you.”

“What.”

“She’s going stir crazy too. Besides that, I think the two of you should spend more time together. It’s good for you.” There was nothing but good cheer behind Dan’s grin, which was precisely why Herbert didn’t trust it.

“I don’t think gathering cadavers is a proper activity for a young lady,” Herbert said sotto voce.

“Then don’t do it. It’s that simple.” Dan rose with a little grunt. “You don’t mind, do you baby?”

Meg reappeared at the doorway, phone in hand. “Just so long as we pick up some Jolly Ranchers, I'm good.”

 

Hebert scowled at the steering wheel.

Meg hurled herself into the passenger seat, slamming the door behind her. “Man, I feel like we’ve been cooped up inside forever. Are we really going to a cemetery?”

“Seatbelt,” Herbert said.

Meg looked at him, confused.

Herbert gestured across his chest. “Come on. I’m not starting the car before you do.”

Meg rolled her eyes as she buckled in. “Sure thing, square.”

Herbert smiled, showing too much teeth. “Oh by all means, don’t buckle your seatbelt. Trust me, I've been first responder at a few accidents. You’ll get a nice clean launch out the windshield.” He made a popping noise with his mouth. “If you’re lucky you’ll land head-first. I once found  someone who rolled a hundred yards, lengthwise. They were basically a bag of pulverized meat.”

Meg looked disturbed.

Herbert chuckled to himself as he turned onto the main road. “Or we could just put safety first, couldn’t we?”

The mix of houses this far out into the boondocks were as follows: stucco McMansions sandwiched by hamlets of trailers and shanties that looked like they had last been painted sometime during the last depression. Meg leaned her head on her hand, her elbow on the door, and looked out the window. Herbert watched the road unscroll, murmuring to himself. 

“What are you looking for?”

“Something.”

Meg glanced at him. “What?”

“I’ll know when I see it.”

A couple seconds of silence passed.

“So did you sleep with my dad?”

Herbert managed to not run them off the road. “W-why would you ask something like that?”

“Just asking. There’s this weird tension between you two.”

Herbert’s face was hot. “Well we didn’t, okay? Why would you even ask about your own father’s sex life?”

“No reason.” Meg looked smug now that she had unsettled him.

Herbert growled. “Look, Dan and I had a professional relationship, that’s all. What would make you think—why would you assume—”

“Well, maybe I've just never seen him around someone who knows him?” Meg extracted a stick of gum from the depths of her hoodie and popped it in her mouth. “I mean, some people know him, but they don’t _know_ him, you know?”

Herbert took a minute to process that sentence. “That surprises me. Your father used to be outgoing to a fault. Doctor Cain was everybody’s best friend.” He couldn’t keep a note of bitterness from creeping into that last sentence.

“Oh he is. But he still holds people at arm’s length. Like, they _feel_ included, but they’re really not.” Meg turned thoughtful. “So why did you split up? Why did my dad send you to prison?”

Herbert tensed. “I’m sure he’s told you.”

“Maybe I want to hear your side.”

This was dangerous ground to tread. “I...your father was beginning to disagree with my methods. But really, the roots of our dissolution lay as far back as your mother’s death.” he paused, waiting.

“Yeah, dad kinda blamed you for that.” Meg pillowed her cheek on her arm. “He said something you made killed her?”

Herbert sighed. _“Someone abusing my formula_ made the thing that killed your mother.”

“But you made the formula.”

Herbert frowned. “That’s the exact kind of flawed logic that led your father to turn me in.”

“But...he’s not really wrong, is he?”

Herbert looked at her. “Yes, in a roundabout and pedantic way, perhaps you could make the case—”

“That you’re responsible for her death,” Meg said. “Dude, you made the corpse juice.”

Herbert heaved an angry sigh. “You know what? Fine. You get an up-close demonstration of the reagent today. And once you’ve seen how it works, you can stop piling al the blame on me, is that a deal?”

Meg blinked. “Um...yeah.”

 

They picked through overgrown wild rye and pokeberries in what was once the front yard of a collapsed shanty. 

“I think there’s a cat over this way. I can see all the places it buried its poop.”

“Where did you get all these tracking skills, anyway?”

“What, didn’t you have cats as a kid?”

“No.” Herbert overturned a rotted timber. “My father used to poison all the animals that came near our house.”

Meg had been in the process of lifting a rusted-out wheelbarrow. She dropped it and gave Herbert an alarmed look. 

Herbert returned it blankly.

Meg turned back to her work with a little shudder.

The stray cat they found was by no means an ideal specimen. Even before it had been felled by a pellet gun, roundworm and other nasties had nearly rendered it cadaverous. By the smell it had been there a while. Meg put her sleeve over the lower half of her face.

“It’ll have to do.” Herbert readied a syringe and the bottle of reagent.

“Do you just have that ready to go at all times?” Meg asked.

Hebert smirked. “Always be prepared.”

He slid the needle between vertebrae and injected the green liquid. After a sizable interval, the cat began to twitch.

Meg’s eyes widened as the cat writhed, creating unnatural sounds as if some demented musician was using its lungs as a bagpipe. 

“I don’t believe it.”

“Belief isn’t a requirement here,” Herbert said to her, twinkle in his eye. “Merely observation of fact.”

The cat righted itself and blinked sluggishly. It looked like it was trying to move, but all of its muscles had a different idea of which direction to go. 

“Okay, that’s _moving_ , but I don't know if I'd call that _alive_ -alive.”

“Well, out in these conditions? The brain’s practically oatmeal.” Herbert checked his watch. “I should euthanize it again, so we can get down to business.”

Meg frowned at the cat, who was licking the hole in its face. “That’s horrible!”

“That’s life. You asked for a demonstration, I showed you. Now it’s over,” Herbert said in a terribly matter-of-fact voice. He rested a hand on her shoulder. “Would you prefer if I leave it here?”

Meg nodded.

“Suffering and in pain? Its grey matter has deteriorated, along with most of its muscle mass?” he aimed her gaze at the animal. “How long do you think it will last like this? Do you think it will enjoy its existence?”

Meg was a little teary. “No.”

“I’ll be quick about it,” Herbert said in an oddly gentle tone of voice, “go wait at the car.”

He waited until her footsteps faded before he fetched up a piece of cinderblock and hit the cat in the back of the neck just below the skull. He made a few more strategic blows until the cat lay broken before him once more.

He looked up to find Meg had retreated to the car, but she was watching him. Herbert laid the brick down and covered the cat with soil in what he thought was a reverent manner.

“Herbert!”

He instinctively flattened down, hiding behind the tall grass. 

“No, no, behind you!”

Herbert glanced back at the derelict house, roof collapsed. Something inside shifted. The hairs on his neck rose.

Herbert began crawling backwards to the car, feeling out with the tip of his foot. He did not make it very far before something launched a piece of rotted wood at him. Herbert rolled twice to avoid it, losing his glasses briefly. By the time he found them and crammed them back on his head, his assailant had emerged from the depths of the house.

It had been a man in his thirties or forties who, by the looks of it, was deep in the throes of meth addiction when he died. Now his eyes lolled senselessly as drool escaped his sore-laden mouth, his body moving like a badly-controlled marionette. He spiked a rusted pail at the duo, it went wide. Herbert frowned.

“Listen to me,” he spoke back at the car without looking, “without moving quickly, I want you to unlock the trunk and take the bag of tools you see there.”

“Don’t worry, I've seen enough horror movies. I got this!”

To Herbert’s great horror, Meg launched herself at the dead man, brandishing a shovel. To her credit, she was able to strike a blow that mostly severed the corpse’s head from his neck. She was not, however, prepared for the corpse to then lunge at her.

“Oh shit!” she dropped the shovel and dodged around it. _“Ohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshit!”_

Herbert ran and scooped up the shovel. The heft felt good in his hands. He brought it down again and again, into the trunk, into all the main limbs, aiming for joints and tendons. When he was finished, the body could do nothing but twitch.

Herbert gulped air. It was like going running after a long winter. His muscles ached, he’d pulled his shoulder slightly, but he felt better.

He looked back at the car. Meg was hunched over by the trunk, a look of horror on her blood-spattered face.

Herbert straightened himself up, clearing his throat.

“Meg,” he said in a commanding voice, “we’re going to clean up here, and then we are going straight back to the house.”

Meg shook her head, eyes not leaving the corpse. “It...it kept moving after I took its head off. That’s not how that’s supposed to go.”

Herbert gave a long-suffering sigh. “Look at me,” he said, chopping his hand in his palm to emphasize words. She did. “This is not some eighties B-movie, all right? These aren’t zombies, a simple blow to the head is not enough to save the day here. I cannot have you charging in like a chainsaw-wielding maniac.”

Meg’s eyes stabbed at his face. “You made the stuff that did this?”

Herbert sensed the conversation drifting away from him. “The reagent was invented to help mankind.”

“So was dynamite.”

“I can’t help it if someone else misapplies it.”

“You’re saying you didn’t do this?”

Herbert huffed. “When would I have had a chance to do this, hmm? And this is the last kind of subject I'd want for experimenting, there’s no telling what effect the solution would have on a brain rotted by amphetamines.”

“So who did, huh?” Meg stalked over to him, poking him in the chest. “You say you’re the only one smart enough to make this stuff, so who did this?”

Herbert looked back at the body. “I don’t know. But I don’t want to find out like this, underequipped and unprepared. We’re going back.” he grabbed Meg’s arm and propelled her to the car.

“We’re just going back to the house?” Meg stumbled a bit. 

“It’s not safe to stay out here. Whoever did this might still be around.” Herbert gave one last glance to the corpse as he started the car, and then made a sloppy u-turn back onto the road.

Meg fidgeted for an uncomfortable silence before blurting out, “so you’re the reason my mom died.”

Herbert swallowed, eyes on the road before them. “...yes. Is that what you want to hear? The substance I invented was appropriated by her crazed stalker, and he made an army of the undead with it.”

She laughed mirthlessly. “Oh yeah, he misused the shit out of it. I can’t see how anyone other than a complete madman would use it that way.”

“It has proper clinical applications,” Herbert said testily, “which is why I am the only one who _should_ have access to it.”

“Well how do you explain what just happened, did you leave some as a tip at the last motel?”

They reached the turnoff that serviced their temporary home, bouncing slightly as they went from asphalt to unfinished dirt and gravel.

“Someone has clearly found one of my caches and experimented with it. Probably some junky looking for a cheap thrill and shooting it into their veins. We should—”

They fell silent as they drew closer to the house. A group of four black SUVs circled the yard, doors hanging wide open.

“Dad,” Meg whispered.

Herbert made a three-point turn and drove back to the road.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the two-week delay, I sort of hit the skids on how to move the plot along and wrote myself into a cul-de-sac. I will resume the actiony parts now.
> 
> I feel like Herbert would make a fun dad, in his own way. He's always wanting to show people things and teach them, he just has a very narrow window of interest, lol.


	9. Plan A

Meg sat on the motel bed, staring at the blank face of her phone. Herbert paced the room, zigzagging around corners and muttering to himself.

“I’ve got $300 emergency cash on me,” he said, “only one syringe and perhaps 30cc’s of reagent. I can replenish it with caches, but my notes were still in the house, along with all the equipment I used to manufacture it.”

Meg said, “dad,” in a cracked voice.

Herbert stopped pacing. “Well, they’ve probably taken him, whoever they are. Not FBI, we would have seen police presence in addition to their vehicles.”

“We fucking know who did it,” Meg said, rising from the bed. Unshed tears made her voice stuffy. “The fucking—Lambrick pricks. Dad’s old bosses. You met them, right? They’ve got scary long reach, I bet they tracked us to the house. Probably snuck a GPS tracker on the car somewhere.”

“That’s impossible, I swept the vehicle when we arrived at the first motel,” Herbert said uncertainly.

“Look, you don’t know these guys. I do. They’ve got enough money and influence to be completely invisible. You think my dad _wanted_ to partner with them? Hell no! But they invested behind a couple different shell companies, and then by the time my dad found out it was too late to pull back.” Meg bit her lip. “Maybe it wasn’t on the car. Maybe one day when I went to get a check-up, they chipped me like a dog.”

“You don’t—you can’t possibly think that—” Herbert stammered. 

“I’ve heard things. Every once in a while old man Lambrick will visit clinics he’s funded and offer certain patients ‘funding opportunities.’ They never come back after that.”

Herbert mulled over the worrying facts. Julian had sneered, _“we’re rich enough to buy our own state.”_ At the time he’d thought it the boast of a monied idiot, but if the elder Lambrick had the forethought to buy Dan’s help through proxies he was probably sensible enough to be dangerous.

Herbert said, “shit,” and sat down on the bed next to Meg.

Meg studied him, blue eyes even bluer now that the whites were bloodshot. “Do you have a plan?”

“I need to think.” Herbert ran a hand through the thinning hair on his scalp. “First of all you need to stay here—”

“I can’t,” Meg said flatly, “it isn’t safe for me here. It isn’t safe for me anywhere. They’re probably looking for me and they’ll find me the second you leave.”

Herbert growled. “All right, I need to find a safe place to put you. In the outside chance they’ve killed him—”

Meg said, “god,” and buried her face in her hands.

“—which I very much doubt they will, but on the off chance they have, I'm going to need you to disappear. I’m leaving you the money, as well as a list of names you will need. Forgers, fixers, that kind of thing.”

“I don’t want to leave dad,” Meg said to the floor.

“You have to. You know he would tell you the same thing under the circumstances.”

“I don’t care. You’re just saying that.”

Herbert’s neck tightened at the pettish tone. He wanted to swat back at her, fighting her illogical tantrum with cold hard facts. Perhaps he might have done that once. Back in med school when he’d been young and eager and with no tolerance for others.

But he wasn’t that man any more. 

Prison had hardened him, true, but it had also sharpened him. Thought human behavior was no less a mystery to him, with its irrational motivations, it was much more manageable.

Herbert bent down so their faces were nearly level. He tried to use a less abrasive tone. “Look, I don't say these things to be mean, all right? I have reasons for the things I do. You may not like or understand them, but everything I do is done with survival in mind.”

Meg laughed sharply. “Whose?”

“At the moment, yours. While I attempt to free your father—”

“Oh yeah, I believe that, you’re real altruistic—”

“—and remove my research from their possession,” Herbert finished. “If what you’re saying is even slightly true, these men should not have the reagent. They are precisely the kind of people I know would exploit it for terrible ends. The reanimated corpse we saw this afternoon was probably their work.”

Meg shuddered. 

“Exactly.” Herbert removed his glasses and buffed out a spot. “Your father would agree.” 

Meg wet her lips. “...I should come too. Not...not because I have big ideas about rescuing my dad, guns blazing, but...I think I can help. I’ve been in their mansion before.”

Herbert donned his glasses again. “You are precisely the last thing I want to bring with me.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re—if they get you, they’ll have the ultimate bargaining chip on your father.” Herbert just barely stopped himself from blurting out her secret, and then wondered why. It wasn’t like dan was around to stop him. “Think for a moment, Meg.” 

“I don’t trust you. I know how this will go. You’ll break in to take your research, then it’ll be _‘oh, I'm sorry, I couldn’t save your father.’_ ” Meg barked a sharp laugh. “Thanks. No thanks.”

“I’m not going to leave him.”

“Yeah right.”

Herbert looked at her, weighing things mentally.

_“I_ was your father’s roommate.”

Meg blinked. “What?”

“In college. I’m the person he was talking about when he told you all those things.”

She looked at him like he’d just told her the sky was green, shaking her head. “You’re—you’re lying.”

“Am I? Why didn’t your father ever give you a name, then?”

Meg’s gaze drifted to the middle distance, shock creeping over her face. 

Herbert removed his glasses, tilting her head back so he could look her in the eye. “I’m not going to lie to you, I still have a lot of resentment for your father. But I'm not going to just _leave_ him. If I could have done that...well, I would have walked away in the beginning. I’ve always fought against your father’s moralizing, his reluctance to see fact, his weakness for women…” his voice tightened with bitterness before he choked off that line of thought. “But I always get drawn back to him, because he’s been one of the few people I've ever met who understands me, even a little.”

Meg blinked. “I still can’t really trust you.”

“Well, that’s to be expected.”

“I know why my dad split with you. I finally understand. You’re not a very good person.”

“Never said I was. But I am the only person you have right now, and I'm going to have to do.” Herbert gave her a small smile.

Meg looked at him. Then, shyly, the corners of her mouth upturned just slightly.

“Now,” Herbert sad, businesslike, “we need to come up with a plan to get in there. Do they accept deliveries, couriers, that kind of thing?”

“They’ve got their own service for delivering, um, equipment.”

“What’s the uniform?”

“I could tell you...or I could make one for you that’s an exact match.”

They smiled at each other.

 

The guard at the underground entrance to the Lambrick mansion stood up. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, what the hell is this? I don’t have any deliveries scheduled until eight.”

The delivery man was bent double, huffing as he pushed along a rolling cart with a large box on top. His lanyard necklace, security card at the end, sprawled out along the surface.

“Came early,” he huffed, “are you going to give me a hand with this or what?”

The guard helped the crate come to a rolling stop. The delivery man stood up, wiping sweat from his brow. He spoke like an overgrown skateboard punk and squinted a lot.

“Thanks. This thing weighs a ton.

“What is it?”

“One of those electromagnets?” he shrugged. “Anyway—” he stripped off the lanyard and handed it over.

The guard frowned at the card, which appeared to have been laminated with packing tape. The delivery guy grinned, shrugging.

“Dropped it on a belt sander. Sorry.” 

Frowning, the guard swiped it through the scanner. It blipped. He swiped it again. “Sorry. No go.”

The delivery guy’s face fell. “Oh shit.” he looked down at the box. “Oh shit. No no no, oh no—”

The guard swiped the card again. Another blip. “I can’t do this all day.”

“No, the-the thing.” the delivery guy squeezed his eyes shut, tapping the box. “The magnet killed the strip.”

The guard sighed, handing it back. “Sorry dude.”

“No, please, can you work with me on this?” the delivery guy clasped his hands together in prayer. “I’m not even supposed to be delivering today, my girlfriend is—look, can’t you just enter my code by hand?”

The guard looked unimpressed. “I could get in trouble for it.”

“I know, I know, I'm an idiot.” the delivery guy thumped his temple. “I took this order because I thought it would get me off even earlier than I was scheduled to—can you just do me a solid? Just this once? I can’t wait a whole day for them to make me another card.”

The guard looked at him. Then down at the box. Then at the card. He sighed.

“You owe me man,” he said, inputting numbers into the security box, “big time. I’m talking beer. Good beer.”

The delivery man grinned. “Whatever you want man, I owe you my life.”

The security gate buzzed and drew open, rolling back once box and delivery man were inside. He pushed it the cart down a series of branching hallways, making mental notes of places he’d seen on the bank of CCTV’s at the guard station. Then, when he wheeled the box to a blind spot, he donned his glasses and knocked on the side of the box.

Meg poked her head out. “See? Easy-peasy.”

“Getting _in_ is never the problem. It’s getting out again.” Herbert scanned the ceiling. “We’re in a level just beneath the ground floor. Since it’s the most publicly accessible entrance, security is bound to be tightest here.” He shucked off his shirt, donning a false tuxedo front. “We don’t have a whole lot of time here. Are you sure you can stay out of sight?” He put his hand out. Meg squirted hair gel in it.

“Sure It’s finding the breaker box I'm worried about.” Meg watched as Herbert ran a hand through his hair, slicking it back. “How long?”

“A half hour. That will give me adequate time to locate your father and possibly my notes.”

“What if they have them locked up?”

“Plan B.” Herbert huffed on his glasses and gave them one last polish before pushing them up his nose. “We burn it all down.”

Meg’s mouth dropped open a bit. “But they’re your life’s work!”

“Yes, and this is the fifth time I've had to transfer them to new paper.” Herbert tapped his skull with a forefinger. “Everything’s still in here, the notes are just to expedite my work.” he caught Meg’s look. “You have your plan B?”

Meg held up a pink mini-taser, smirking. Herbert nodded. He slid his arms into a tuxedo jacket Meg held out for him.

“Alright. Work quickly, work quietly, and above all don’t get caught.”

“Just like shoplifting.”

Herbert paused, raising an eyebrow at her. 

“Oh what, like you get to judge me.”

Herbert sighed. “See you in a while.” 

Meg ducked behind some boxes as Herbert took up his brisk walk, navigating various concrete hallways that honeycombed the ground beneath the Lambrick estate. Some were filled with boxes of miscellaneous cargo, others with equipment of various kinds. One held a bank of freezers bearing a biohazard symbol, Herbert struggled not to take a second look.

The access door to the ground floor had two gentlemen dressed in tuxedos similar to Herbert’s own. They held AK-47’s.

Herbert stopped short and sighed irritably. “Let me up.”

One of them eyed him suspiciously. “I don’t know you. You’re not on duty here.”

“Yes, I'm _supposed_ to be in the east wing,” Herbert snapped, “and if you’ll let me get back there, I can forget I saw you too.”

One frowned, reaching for a walky-talky at his hip. Herbert’s eyes dipped to the movement. He wet his lips and leaned forward.

“I’m here for our special guest,” he murmured, so that they had to strain to catch it. “I was sent for _specifically_ , alright? Technically I'm not even here, I'm still down in Nicaragua.”

A shadow passed over their faces. 

“Sorry,” the other one blurted, “look, we just go where they tell us, man.” he held his hands up “you’re not gonna say anything to Bevans, right?”

Herbert made sure to give them a good long look before speaking. “I suppose not. I’ve got a bad memory for faces. Maybe as bad as yours.”

The two men parted like the red sea to let him pass, contorting their bodies so no part of them touched Herbert. He allowed himself a little smirk as he ascended the stairs to the main part of the mansion.


	10. The Losing Hand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for mild gore and dismemberment in this chapter.

Herbert hugged walls and peered around corners. He found a security keypad near a side door, right where he thought it would be. Fingerprint grease stood out on four of the nine keys, Herbert studied them. The smudge with the downward swipe was probably on the last number in the code, and knowing what he did about the Lambricks, the code probably changed from week to week. Herbert went snooping in a nearby wastebasket. It had been emptied recently, but a torn scrap of paper stuck to the bottom. Herbert deciphered the numbers from the edges and, praying it was a current code, punched in the numbers.

The system disarmed.

Herbert breathed a sigh of relief. 

The room with his papers was probably upstairs, as the first floor held all the “function” rooms like the dining room and the parlor. Herbert straightened himself out and walked, businesslike, up the main staircase. He passed another patrolling tuxedo-wearer, exchanging cursory nods on the steps. 

Adrenaline pumping, Herbert wandered down the hallways, trying his damnedest to look like someone who belonged there. Most of the hallway doors were closed, but one intriguing candidate had an electronic card lock. The card carrier would probably be the head of security, aka no one Herbert wanted to get near. He glanced at his watch. Meg would hopefully be tripping the circuit breaker in roughly 17 minutes, but he wasn’t sure it would be safe to wait until then. Besides, he had been hoping the pandemonium from the power outage would cover his escape.

Herbert frowned, tapping his fingers on the wall by the card reader. He took the lamp from a nearby table and jerked the cord from it in one go. Stripping the vinyl (painfully) off with his teeth, he plugged the cord back in and stuck the bare wires in the card reader. 

The lock shorted. The door swung open.

Smiling, Herbert let himself in.

The room was a small medical office/examination room. A glass-fronted cabinet sat against one wall, with another electronic lock. All out of patience, Herbert wrapped his hand in a towel and punched the glass.

It took a moment’s work to find his papers. Herbert breathed a sigh of relief for a moment, before he noticed what lurked underneath. Dan’s extensive cloning research took up a full third of the shelf.

Herbert deliberated for a while, mouth pressing into a grim line, before he swept all of the papers into the sink and turned on the water. Ink swirled away down the drain, paper became waterlogged, and whatever wisdom clung to the pages was lost. 

Best this way, he thought. Dan wouldn’t want his research falling into their hands anyway.

Dan.

Herbert glanced behind himself suddenly. Should he try, would he even have a chance at extricating Dan? What’s more, did he want to?

A part of him did, a part that squirmed and clenched selfishly, a part of him that could not be sated by any kind of logic. He could lie to himself all he wanted, but at the end of the day he wanted Dan around because it felt good to have him around. 

He would never not be incensed about Dan’s betrayal, about years wasted in prison while Dan played happy families with his girlfriend’s revenant, but…

But…

Herbert clenched and unclenched his hands. He had to try. Even if it was only to see Dan was still alive.

Back out in the hallway, he ran into a pair of tuxedo-clad guards rushing to the door he had been intently walking away from.

“The cabinet alarm went off,” one said, “what’s going on?”

Herbert thumbed behind himself. “Someone’s broken the e-lock. He’s probably still around. I’ve already covered this end of the hall, someone needs to get downstairs.”

“We should radio Bevans,” the other guard said, grimacing slightly. “He’ll want to know about the breech.”

The other guard looked intently at Herbert. “I don’t recognize you.’

Herbert gave him a mildly contemptuous look. “Of course you don’t, I just got in.”

The guard squinted suspiciously. Herbert sighed and tapped his watch.

“Look, gentlemen, the longer we dally here, the greater chance that our little interloper gets away. I need you—” he pointed to one guard, “to contact Bevans, we need to establish a perimeter. You—” he indicated the other guard, “come with me. I heard someone down this way.”

He pushed up into their personal space so that they bobbed uncertainty in his wake. Then, miraculously, they fell into action. One guard turned and headed for the stairs, walky-talky clapped to his mouth. The other matched stride with Herbert as they marched down the hall, hand on the back of his hip where a gun undoubtedly  lay. Herbert mimicked the gesture, mentally noting how screwed he’d be if it came time to draw a gun.

“So what clued you in?” the guard asked. He was youngish, built, moved like he’d had training. Probably ex-marine, ex-army, ex-something or other. “Did you hear something, or…?”

“When I was down the hall. I heard a door open and close. I knew no one was supposed to be in there right now.”

The guard frowned. “Hey yeah, where’s the doc? Wasn’t he supposed to be working in the subfloor?”

Herbert frowned. Subfloor? Was Dan down in the basement? If so, it made his exit plan a whole lot more streamlined...provided Herbert could get near him.

“He’ll need to be notified too. Whoever broke in went through the cabinet. There might be papers missing.”

The hallway branched and dead-ended. The guard sighed, looking at all the closed doors.

“There’s one thing I can’t figure out, though.”

Herbert feinted left, palming a cut-glass ashtray. “What?”

In one swift motion, the guard pulled his gun and aimed it at Herbert. “Why the fuck you’d bother breaking into the Lambrick mansion. Do you even know who I work for?”

Herbert shrugged apathetically. “Shepard Lambrick.”

The guard paused. “Right. Yeah. Well you better be ready for some serious hurt, man. Bevans is going to deal with you personally.” 

Herbert yawned.

The guard frowned and relaxed his grip for a half-second, incredulous. 

Herbert struck.

He bowled the ashtray at the guard’s skull, it made a dent in his forehead that immediately gushed blood. The man fell backwards into the wall, gaping idiotically, gun sliding from his grip. Herbert snatched it up, flicked the safety off, and pressed himself against the wall. Footsteps started up in other parts of the mansion. He didn’t have long.

Herbert checked his watch. Ten minutes. 

He tried all the door knobs until he found one unlocked. He turned to the opposite door and shot the lock, kicking it so it swung open just slightly. Then he retreated to the unlocked door, which turned out to be a closet.

He held his breath as the footsteps converged on the hallway, male voices arguing about his whereabouts. Someone kicked open the broken door, Herbert listened as they piled into the room. He held his hand over the doorknob, but stopped himself from turning it. Any adequate security force would leave at least a single guard posted outside the door while they went in. it was only a matter of time before they realized he wasn’t in there and began trying other doors. If he burst out now, shooting, he might be able to squeeze off a few lucky shots and take out the single guard before the others overwhelmed him. 

The choice was taken out of his hands when the door was yanked open and Herbert had a number of guns trained on him.

“Come with us.”

Herbert held his hands up, looking innocent. “Why?”

 

The room they ushered him into held a single red throne-style chair, he was pushed so he knelt before it. The room was littered with a number of stuffed animal mounts that looked rare and very, very illegal. There was a flatscreen TV that took up half a wall.

“Well, well, well, I have to say I'm impressed.” a lofty voice floated in from somewhere behind Herbert. “You’ve gotten farther than any other burglar that has dared come here. The last one didn’t even make it past the driveway.”

A middle-aged man lurched into view. He had a mahogany walking stick that he leaned on, and an aura of smugness exuded from him in waves. Herbert guessed this was Julian’s father.

Shepard Lambrick stopped before the hooded chair but didn’t sit. “I’m afraid I'm going to have to ask who you are.”

Herbert shrugged, feeling the press of gun barrels on his back. “You don’t know me. But you destroyed the company I work for. Years of my life’s work down the drain.”

Shepard chuckled in a way that might have been harmless for any other man. “Oh boy, you’re coming in hot right out of the gates, aren’t you? Now I'm going to repeat my question.” he produced a remote and clicked on the TV. “now, I know who this is…”

Meg’s irate face appeared on-screen. She was held in place by four guards, one who had a vivid bite mark on his wrist. 

Herbert swallowed with a dry click.

“...but I have to say, your face isn’t familiar.” Shepard tapped the remote on his chin. “So who are you? I know you know our mutual friend, otherwise you wouldn’t have shown up with his lovely little daughter.”

Herbert gave a slow, deliberate blink. “I’m an operative from a rival family. They paid me in gold bullion to shortsheet your bed.”

Shepard chuckled. “You have a wit about you, I'll say that much.” He sighed, smile slipping away. “But alas, I need to know who I'm talking to.” he paused. “I have an idea. Julian!”

Herbert looked as far to the side as they would let him, to see the younger Lambrick hovering at the threshold. He gave Herbert a terror-stricken look.

Herbert smiled.

“Now Julian, do you recognize this gentleman?”

Julian shook. He looked at Herbert. He looked away. “N-n-n-n-no, father.”

Shepard frowned. “The boy hasn’t been right for a while now, my apologies. I’m afraid there was an...incident.”

“How terrible,” Herbert said innocently. Julian wouldn’t make eye contact.

“I’m going to need a name,” Shepard prompted.

Herbert swiveled so they were in eye contact. “Raphael Mendez. Have you ever heard of him?”

Shepard frowned and shook his head.

“Well, that doesn’t surprise me. Very few people knew him. He lived out of two rooms his entire life, washing and wearing his single shirt every day, working his fields. Illiterate. Nothing remarkable about him. Except—” Herbert drew a breath. “—when a band of guerrilla fighters demanded entrance to his house, he stood in front of the door and said they would not come in. Around seventy-four years of age. They had guns. He had nothing. But he swore in the name of the virgin they would come in over his dead body. And...he was right. A man of strong moral convictions, Mr. Mendez.”

Shepard furrowed his brow. “...why are you telling me this?”

Herbert smirked at Julian. “No reason.”

Julian shrank back.

Shepard gave him an odd look. “It’s not often I meet such a cool customer as yourself, but I have to kill you on principal. Nothing personal, you understand.”

“Of course,” Herbert said.

“But my men tell me you trashed important papers when you broke in. I need to know why you’re here. Now maybe—” Shepard sat with a grunt. “—maybe who you are has something to do with it, and maybe it doesn’t. But I only ask nicely so many times before I hand you over to my men.”

“Oh good,” Herbert said, “I was worried this was going to go on forever.

Shepard eyed him up and down. The same look Julian had given him back in the clinic. “...take him down there, put him in with the little missy. We’ll get to the truth soon enough.”

The guns jabbing in his back drove Herbert from the trophy room to an elevator, from the elevator to the basement, where Meg sat under the watchful eye of an imposing bald man. Literally. The man smiled so the patch over his left eye shifted slightly as Herbert was shown in.

“Good, boys. Leave him. We’ll discuss discipline for your lackluster surveillance later.”

“Except me, right sir?” the guard who had stopped Herbert at the door fawned slightly. “I alerted you that there was something funny about the new guy?”

The bald man gave him a withering look. “Yes, Jeffries. Get back to the door.”

Jeffries slouched back to his post. The rest looked tense as they turned, leaving Herbert in the custody of the bald man. He smirked at Herbert.

“So hard to find good help these days.” he gestured with his gun to a metal barrel. Herbert sat. The room they were in had bare metal walls and a drain in the floor. Herbert didn’t like that.

“Mr. Lambrick instructs we wait a while to begin questioning,” the bald man said, taking Meg’s left hand as he holstered his gun, “he’s going to consult with our newest guest on your identities and he insists we hold you as collateral.”

Herbert snorted. “What, holding us prisoner is supposed to make him cooperate?”

“No, this is.”

The bald man placed Meg’s hand on a nearby barrel and produced a wicked-looking knife from an ankle sheath. In one swift stroke, he separated hand from wrist.

Herbert jumped up. “Meg? Meg!”

Meg screamed, clutching her stump as she fell away from the man who had cut her hand off. Herbert went to her, simultaneously trying to remove his belt and grip her face.

“Meg? Meg, look at me. Breathe Meg, breathe.” He got his belt around her wrist. Behind him, he heard the click of the door closing. “You’re going into shock, I need you to—” he ripped off his tuxedo front and used it to staunch the bleeding. Meg was pale, her body jolted by uncontrollable tremors as her gaze rolled around the room. “Look at me Meg, it’s going—it’s going to be okay. I need you to breathe.” Herbert swallowed, looking at the solid metal door.

“It’s going to be okay,” he said quietly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Further random Herbert Headcanons I have no good place for:  
> Herbert is semi-fluent in German and Spanish, from his days in Zurich and South America.  
> Herbert would stick to glasses rather than contacts because glasses also double as eye protection in splatter situations.  
> In addition to working at security companies, Herbert moonlighted as a paramedic because it was easier to find fresh test subjects than if he was in a stationary doctor role.  
> Herbert will periodically burn his papers and findings after committing them to memory. He has learned to travel only with things he can stand to lose.  
> He only buys the most generic off-the-rack clothing he can, both because he can't be bothered to put effort into dressing and because he wants to be forgettable.


	11. Cloning Blues

“...the semi had jacknifed and was laying across three lanes,” Herbert was saying, “the driver was belted in but had removed the shoulder portion of the seatbelt. From the presence of a portable DVD player and...other clues, we surmised he had been watching pornography when the collision happened.”

Herbert sprawled out on the floor, back to the wall as he reclined at a slight angle. The front of his shirt was sodden with blood. Meg’s head lay on his chest. Her arm rested on the wall at above head-height. The stump at the end had a bandage improvised from the torn remnants of Herbert’s tuxedo front and her hoodie drawstring.

“The motorcycle was intact. The semi had clipped it, launching the rider off-road. He hit a guardrail on the way, which decapitated him. While we bagged the bodies, someone sent the rookie to find the helmet. He did, and brought it back wondering why it was so heavy. The senior paramedic turned it over...and we found his head.” Herbert stretched from the shoulders. “And that’s the worst accident I've ever seen.”

Meg stared at the opposite wall. She was pale and shivering. “My worst one was back in middle school. This kid, Kieran, he tried to do that thing where you run up a car while it drives really slowly towards you? Except he tried to do it on his skateboard. The board went out from under his feet and he actually went sideways over the car, kissed the pavement with his teeth. Everyone laughed. I mean, it sounds bad, but if you knew him you would have laughed too.”

Herbert shifted. The cold from the bare walls chilled his back, and Meg’s arm. She felt feverish when he put a hand to her neck, just over her artery.

“I’m going to die, aren’t I?” Meg asked.

Herbert retracted his hand. “If you don’t get proper medical care...yes, that is very much a possibility.”

“Oh.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about that, though. To keep your father compliant, they will have to keep you alive.”

The door clicked open.

Herbert sat up, careful not to jar Meg.

The bald man walked in, smiling from ear to ear. “Mr. Lambrick would like to see you now.”

“Oh great,” Meg said flatly, “because I want to see him.”

Herbert helped her to stand, walking her along with an arm around her shoulders. They were shown to a room past the freezers with the biohazard symbols, this one appeared to be for much more elaborate medical procedures.

Meg gasped and almost stopped walking, but Herbert coaxed her onward.

The room was full of sheet-covered gurneys and stands of medical equipment, none of which would have been out of place in a hospital.

What launched it screaming into mad-scientist territory were the floor-to-ceiling tanks which contained...well, it was probably simplest to call them female bodies. At one point, they probably had been. Before the one on the end had sprouted fingers from its knees, before the one closest to Herbert had developed a second face from a tumorous growth on its neck. Those were just the ones that bore description.

Herbert tore his gaze away from a specimen that appeared to have eyeballs for breasts at the sound of the door opening and closing.

Shepard Lambrick walked in. He set a small sandwich plate on the gurney before them. Meg’s severed hand lay on the plate, garnished with a single sprig of parsley.

“What the fuck,” Meg blurted, “are you guys the fucking Umbrella Corporation?”

Shepard gave a nonchalant glance at the tubes “Oh these? Just rough sketches. My da Vinci is just working up to a full masterpiece.” he smiled at Meg. It was not a good smile.

“Well, it seems I was wrong about you, little lady,” Shepard said, “my apologies. I hope we can move past this little misunderstanding.”

Meg held out her stump. “...Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Oh I know, we can never replace what’s yours, but I employ only the best of the best doctors.” Shepard winked at Herbert. “I’m sure we can do a little something for you. After all, you’re a crucial piece of the puzzle.”

Herbert tensed.

“What are you talking about?” Meg said.

“Mr. Lambrick,” Herbert butted in, “if we could—”

“Call me Shep, please.” Shepard beckoned over a chair and sat with a little _ oof. _

Herbert pressed his lips together. “...if we could come to terms elsewhere? I would like to speak without distractions.” he indicated Meg behind her back.

Shepard smiled wider. “Why? The little lady is special, after all. I can’t believe we never put it together. After all, Megan Halsey died over thirty years ago—”

Herbert winced, closing his eyes.

“—yet here you are. I have to admit, I'm a little hurt you were kept from me, but well...your dad’s a bit of a shy one about his research.” Shepard gripped his walking stick. “But no more. You’re here now and, well, practically family. I wouldn’t mind if you called me gramps, Julian doesn’t seem in too much of a hurry to give me grandkids.”

Meg’s face was already pale from blood loss, but it whitened to the point of translucency. Her breathing became erratic. “What’s he talking about?”

Herbert tightened his grip around her shoulders. “Don’t worry,” he murmured so only she could hear, “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

Shepard shifted in his seat. “Now, me, I've got a bum ticker. My pop had it, and he died when he was only 58. I’ve made it past that age, but as you can see it’s taking a toll on me.”

“Yes, you’ve got a weakness along your left side,” Herbert broke in, anything to get him away from the subject of Meg. “And you’ve probably had a pacemaker put in, correct?”

Shepard shot him a finger-gun. “Correctamundo. I’ve done just about everything but the transplant. Here’s the thing, though, who would be a better match for me...than me?”

Herbert worked it out in his head. “...I see. You want Dan to clone you a heart.”

“Oh sure, but why stop there? Why not new lungs, a new liver, and, hell, maybe even a new body?”

Herbert’s mouth thinned into a line.

Shepard shifted again, making a face. “Now I'm sure you know that if you clone an old guy, you’re just going to get another old guy—”

“No,” Meg snapped, “it’s that your telomeres shorten as you age, and cloning just reproduces tissue with the same length telomeres.”

Shepard stopped short. “Um, yes.”

Herbert straightened his glasses, hiding his smug look behind his hand.

“Well, your daddy is just the man to solve that problem for me. And if he does...well, I'll make sure you’re set up for life.” Shepard smiled.

“You’re nuts if you think my dad’s going to agree to that,” Meg said, “he’s got morals, goddamnit.”

“She’s right. It’s an annoying habit he has,” Herbert said.

Shepard turned to him. “Oh sure, but I think you could probably talk him into it...Dr. West.”

Herbert frowned.

“Oh yeah, Doc’s told us all about you. Hell, what we want probably wouldn’t even be possible without your help.”

“And what makes you think you’ve earned my help?” Herbert asked loftily, “I can assure you I don’t have the same moral compunctions as Dr. Cain, I'm not really someone you’d want near your prone body.”

Shepard sighed. “Doc said you’d probably say that. Well, I'll get you all in a room together, and we’ll just see what happens.” He got up. “The little lady can stay down here in the meantime. We can see to that arm.”

“I want to see my dad,” Meg said.

Shepard chuckled. “Quite the little firebug, aren’t you? Well don’t you worry, you’ll see him eventually.  _ After  _ we work something out.”

Meg clenched her remaining hand into a fist. On the plate, the fingers twitched.

Only Herbert noticed.

Shepard walked to the door. “You two just make yourselves comfortable down here. I’ll get someone to see to the little lady, then we can escort you upstairs.”

Herbert squeezed Meg’s arm, discouraging her from saying anything until Shepard was out the door. Two new guards, ones Herbert hadn’t seen before, entered and posted to either side of the door. 

Herbert sat Meg down forcibly, facing away from the guards and towards the hand.

“What was he saying? About the telomeres and my mom and…” Meg’s eyes widened. “...am I...am I…”

“You are a clone, Meg. Yes.” Herbert pitched his voice low. “Now is sadly not the time to go over this. I need you to—”

Meg gave out a sob so sudden it made him flinch. 

“I’m...fuck.” she wiped her eyes on her wrist. “I’m made from someone’s dead body, I'm…” a look of horror stole over her face. “Did my dad...did he ever use the corpse juice on my mom?”

Herbert didn’t say anything, but the answer was on his face.

“Fuck.” Meg started hyperventilating. “Oh my god. Oh my god. I’m a—I'm like these things.” she gestured at the tubes full of malformed bodies. “I’m a goddamn monster.”

Herbert grabbed her remaining hand. “Meg. listen to me, you are not a monster. You are a masterpiece of medical science.” The sincerity in his tone surprised even him.

Meg tried to pull away from him. “Why the hell would I believe you? All you do is lie and make monsters out of dead people, that’s all you do!”

“But I didn’t make you, Meg. Your father did.”

Meg eased up on her pulling. 

“Your father loved your mother,” Herbert said, “and no matter what I did, I couldn’t distract him from that. He made you to be his  _ child _ , not his test subject. Whatever effect I've had on your creation is secondary, no matter how much I want it to be otherwise.” Herbert paused, swallowing. “He accomplished alone what we could not together. You’re not a monster, Meg, because your father loves you.”

Meg blinked. Her voice was stuffy when she said, “but I'm made from a dead person.”

“And? Would you take this same issue with test tube babies? Couples who use IVF? Not everyone comes into the world the same way, Meg.” Herbert wiped her eyes with a thumb. “Now I want you to look at your hand.”

Meg looked down, confused.

“No, at the plate,” Herbert hissed. The guards looked bored, ignoring their conversation.he needed to keep it that way.

Meg looked over at the plate, to find the hand’s fingers had curled. Her mouth dropped open.

“Holy—”

Herbert discreetly put his hand over her mouth. “I want you to move your  _ left  _ hand, Meg. Concentrate.”

She gave him a look.

“Meg. That is  _ your  _ hand. Own it. Move it.”

Meg looked at the plate, thinking hard. Her face fell in astonishment as the fingers straightened, bit by bit, until it was flat on the plate once more.

“Holy shit,” she said under her breath.

Herbert squeezed her shoulders, smiling proudly.

“That,” he said, “Was my contribution to you.”

Meg’s face wobbled between awe and horror. “That...shouldn’t be possible.”

Herbert smiled. “People didn’t think it was possible to fight sickness by infecting patients with a weaker version of the same sickness, once upon a time.”

Meg stared at him. “...did you just compare making zombies to vaccines?”

“Any medical breakthrough that went misunderstood at its birth.” Herbert glanced behind him. Another guard pair, guns in hand, were entering. Their time grew short. “I want you to keep two things in mind while I'm gone. 1: consciousness resides in every part of the body. 2: you are alive.”

Meg was wary. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Herbert stood, tapping her on the head. “You’re a smart girl. You figure it out.”

The guards took him by the shoulders and propelled him out the door. The last glimpse he had of Meg was her right arm curled protectively around her stump, a lost look on her face. He prayed her constitution was up for the next few hours, because he had a feeling it was about to go sideways.

 

In the elevator, up the stairs, and into a drawing room with a cozy fire already crackling away in the fireplace. Herbert was shoved bodily into the room. Shepard was already seated in an armchair, looking for all the world like a grandfather ready to read a bedtime story. His smile broadened as Herbert was ushered in.

“Dr. West, so glad you’re here! You know our other guest of course.”

Dan had been standing by the window with his back to the door. Now he turned. He had a vivid bruise around one eye, and he favored his right leg. He had not come quietly.

Dan looked at him with utter contempt.

“West,” he said, “Bastard.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've spoken at length about Reanimator, but I haven't mentioned how amazing Jeffrey Combs' performance as Shepard Lambrick is. Just a smarmy bastard, through and through. It's great. The clincher for me is the moment at the end when he presses a very broken Iris into thanking him for the game, and then amiably insisting he call her "Shep". It's the kind of part he just absolutely slays, and Robin Lord Taylor just works fantastically as his son. I really wish they had interacted on Gotham, or that Jeffrey had been given more than what amounts to a cameo, but...that's a rant for another day.


	12. Familiar Faces

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: brief suggestion of prison assault.

Relief at seeing Dan alive and whole was tempered by the look of utter fury on Dan’s face.

Herbert tried not to squirm. “Dan, I—”

Dan was shaking his head. “Don’t even. Not now.”

Shepard smirked. He was enjoying this. “Now boys, I don’t want any bad blood between you two. You’re going to be working together.”

“I won’t. Not with this asshole.” Dan glared. “They cut off Meg’s hand, Herbert. That’s on you.”

“I—was coming—to help you!” Herbert gestured frantically. Years of jail-learned stoicism melted away under Dan’s gaze. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this flustered.

“Bullshit!”

“I was! _And_ my papers,” Herbert allowed, because Dan was giving him _that_ look, “Meg wouldn’t have left without you anyway, you know that!”

“You could have talked her into it, you’re good at talking people into doing shit they don’t want to do,” Dan snarled.

“That isn’t fair—”

“—fuck you, there is no fair!” Dan crossed the floor, Herbert backed up accordingly. “All you needed to do was run! What you always do, scamper like a cockroach when the light goes on!” He drew in a breath that sounded like a sob. _“Why didn’t you leave?”_

Herbert tried to speak slowly and calmly. “Think, Dan. My papers were in the house. The money, our clothes—”

“I keep an emergency stash in the glove box, along with some spare IDs.”

Herbert said “ _oh_ ” in a small voice.

Dan smiled, anger making it more akin to a chimp baring his teeth. “You didn’t even bother to look, did you? God!” He threw up his hands and started pacing.

Shepard looked at them, amused. “Aren’t you two just like an old married couple. Complete with a child. Tell me, was her mother as pretty and fine as she is?”

Dan slowed to a halt, back tense. He looked at Shepard. Then at Herbert.

Herbert winced.

Dan flew at him, fist cocked back. Herbert fell back, hands open in surrender. Dan gave his collar a wrench that made his teeth click.

“Does she know? _Does Meg know?!”_

“Dan! Dan, it’s not my fault, _he_ told her!” Herbert’s voice cracked and he jabbed a finger at Shepard, who was unrepentantly ogling them.

Dan looked between Herbert and Shepard, chewing his lip.

“God dammit,” he said. He released Herbert, made a half-turn, and dented a wall with his fist. 

“Whoa now, settle down.” Shepard was suddenly businesslike and stern, the shift reminding Herbert that his genial affect was just that, an affect. “I draw the line at damaging my property, Dr. Cain. I need your hands, not your temper.”

Dan hissed air over his teeth, locking his hands together behind his head as he turned away. Herbert straightened himself prissily, slicking his hair back in place.

“Meg’s stronger than you give her credit for.”

Dan gave him a death glare.

“She is.” Herbert straightened his glasses.

“Forgive me if I don't trust your expertise when it comes to _my_ daughter.”

“We’ve had some time to talk. I believe she has a resilience that doesn’t owe anything to her genetic makeup,” Herbert said meaningfully.

Dan rolled his eyes. “Oh yes, you’re very paternal, aren’t you? I hate to break this to you, but I never considered you as anything close to a parent to her.”

Herbert was speechless for a moment. “W-well then, why did you keep insisting we spend time together?”

“So you’d be less inclined to dissect her the second my back was turned.”

Herbert sputtered. “Is that all you think of me?” he asked, indignant.

Dan put their faces a little closer together. “Yes,” he said firmly.

Herbert scoffed. “I can’t believe anything I'm hearing right now. You of all people—”

“Of all people? I have every right to—”

“—don’t grandstand your morals with me, Dan. You were a ready and willing participant in everything you blame me for—”

“—like hell I was!”

Herbert leaned forward, nearly nose-to-nose with Dan.

“You sent me to prison,” he said with the air of a lawyer waving a fingerprint-smeared dagger around. “Everything I did, you did too. Yet I'm the only one who went to jail?”

Dan scoffed. “You deserved it.”

Herbert touched his ear. “What was that? I couldn’t hear you over the sound of your own hypocrisy. I was in general population with rapists and murderers, Dan. Do you want to hear about my first cellmate? He punched me in the face and stole my pillow. Then later that night—”

Dan withdrew a little. “I don’t...I don't want to hear—”

“—oh but you _will,_ after all, I _deserved_ it.” Herbert leaned even closer, locking eyes with him. “He told me to roll over on my stomach, but I refused. So he grabbed me—”

“—if I could just interject for a minute, here?” Shepard held a hand up, looking irked. “This isn’t family therapy night, this is my house. Whatever’s between you two, keep it that way. The doc has been itching to meet you both, so let’s just get that over and done with.”

Herbert frowned. He had assumed, up until this point, that when they had used the term ‘doc’ they meant Dan.

“Whatever wide-eyed med school grad you have stored away, I can guarantee he hasn’t got the stomach for this,” Dan said, “we’re moving past medical territory into something far more gruesome.”

The smug look didn’t dissipate from Shepard’s face. “Hear that?” he called, “Dr. Cain thinks you aren’t up for the task. Dunno about Dr. West, though.”

“Of my esteemed colleague Dr. West,” said a horribly familiar voice, '' I can speak only with the highest commendation.”

The hairs on the back of Herbert’s neck rose.

Dr. Howard Phillips stepped out of the shadows, smiling beatifically. Herbert had barely slept in the past fifteen years, but Phillips looked like he had not slept at all. He still had a young man’s face but his eyes, his eyes were ancient and mad.

Dan looked between Herbert’s guilt-stricken expression and the doctor’s knowing smile. He made the connection.

“Oh Jesus fucking Christ, really?” he said, indicating Phillips with his hand.

“Not now, Dan,” Herbert mumbled.

Phillips turned his sick gaze to Dan. “Dr. Cain, I'm so honored to finally meet you,” he said, extending his hand to shake. Dan looked at it nervously. “You see, I heard you also lost someone you love, and that inspired you to take up the work.”

Herbert kept his voice low: “Howard—”

Phillips turned his head mechanically to West. “Oh, I almost forgot. I think I found something of yours.”

He turned and whistled. A reanimated quadruped padded to his heels, tongue slobbering all over its stubbled cheeks and chin. Fido woofed.

Dan gave a withering glare to Herbert, who found other things to look at.

Phillips smiled. “It’ll be wonderful to work with you again, Dr. West. I have such...sights to show you.”

Herbert cleared his throat. “About that…”

“You’ve seen some of my work already. Mr. Lambrick has been more than generous with the lab space.”

Shepard gave an _‘aw shucks’_ shrug.

Herbert weighed his next words carefully. “I am...regretful about the way we parted. I understand the situation at the prison was dealt with—”

“They scapegoated the warden,” Phillips said dreamily, “and threw me in a mental ward. I was there for over ten years, subject to all sorts of extreme therapy. It didn’t make any difference, I knew what was real and what wasn’t. And I knew the formula, Dr. West, because I learned it from you.”

Herbert tried to keep a note of panic from entering his voice. “Be that as it may, Dr. Phillips, I think we need to—”

He wasn’t listening. Phillips was scratching Fido on his jowls, making the pink skin jiggle with the force of his caresses.

“I was so happy to learn that Dr. Cain successfully revived someone he lost,” he was saying, “because I have something similar in mind. I’m sure you know who it is.”

Herbert closed his eyes.

“The bodies in the basement,” he said, “those are all your attempts to clone your reporter friend Laura?”

Phillips gave him a puzzled look. “No. Emily.”

Herbert felt like a man who stood toe to the edge of a yawning crevasse, peeking down into the vast emptiness and seeing pebbles rattle down the sides.

“Howard,” he said with false calm, “have you been testing your reagent out on local cadavers?”

Phillips nodded proudly. “Always test your formula. You taught me that.”

“What do you do to them afterwards, do you dispose of them?”

Shepard raised a hand. “I can field that one. We hand ‘em over to the boys to blow off steam. They like to race them. One or two might have gotten loose, but in this county nobody notices jack squat.”

Herbert put his forehead in his hand. 

“If I could just say something,” Dan broke in, “this all seems like a spectacularly bad idea. Cloning and reagent just flat out do not mix. I found success with my technique because I stayed completely away from it.”

Herbert diplomatically remained silent.

“Besides that, even if you miraculously manage to clone a full adult male body, you’re essentially going to wind up with an empty shell that screams mindlessly all hours of the day.”

Shepard gave a knowing smirk, which Phillips matched with an empty-eyed smile.

“That’s...not strictly true,” Herbert said to Dan’s back. “NPE transfer would, presumably, take care of that little problem. I’d explained the process of gathering NPE to Dr. Phillips when we were in prison.”

Dan deliberately looked away from Herbert. “God damn you.”

“Dan, please, I'm trying to think.”

Shepard rubbed his hands together. “Well, that’s it boys. We’ve got a plan going forwards, now.” He stood. “You’ve got all the money in the world to ask for, I'll keep you stocked up with whatever chemicals you need.”

“No,” Dan said.

Shepard frowned. “Is that dissonance in the ranks I hear?”

“It’s rejection. You’re a psychopath, Lambrick, I've known that since day one. It would be a crime against humanity to prolong your natural life any further.”

Shepard was not amused. “I’ll kill her.”

Dan’s voice was flat and dead. “I know.”

Shepard sighed. “Well what about you Dr. West? I know you’re a bit less morally bogged down than Dr. Cain here.”

Herbert was trying to catch and hold Phillips’ gaze. It was like trying to grab a single goldfish out of a murky pond.

“Howard,” he said. “She’s dead. Your sister has been gone too long. Even I can’t bring her back.”

Phillips’ face twitched in the beginning of a fit. “Emily—”

“—Is dead. You don’t even have her tissue, Howard. There’s no way of recovering her NPE, you have nothing—”

“Mr. West,” Shepard broke in sharply, “are you in or are you out? I have no use for an idle pair of hands.”

Herbert turned to Shepard, voice dripping with contempt. “Do you have any idea what happened to the last man who attempted to extort me into doing something?”

“I suppose you’re going to tell me.”

Herbert said nothing, but a small smile crept across his face. Shepard seemed genuinely unnerved before he turned to Dan.

“Well, I was hoping at least one of you would play ball. I like to think I'm a patient man, but this just isn’t done. I’m offering you an opportunity to work again, and with every tool possible at your disposal. You’re really telling me you’d rather die?”

“There are worse things than death,” Dan said. Herbert nodded.

Shepard grimaced like he’d eaten something sour.

“In that case, I'm going to have to adjourn this little meet and greet for...a little game.”

Dan said “ _fuck_ ” under his breath.

Shepard hit a buzzer, summoning the bald guard into the room. “Oh Bevans, do you think you could throw something together for our guests downstairs? Maybe in the second parlor? We’ll need a lot of plastic, there’s bound to be some splatter.”

“I can arrange that, sir.” Bevans turned to them gestured with his gun barrel. “Hands where I can see them, gentleman. Nice and slow and orderly, now.” 

“Bevans had a little...incident during one of our last parlor games,” Shepard said, “so he’s just a little jumpy. I really would try not to move suspiciously around him. Dr. Phillips?”

Phillips had covered his face in his hands, shaking, but now he snapped to attention. 

“I’m going to need some help with the little lady downstairs. Are you up for it?”

Dan’s face turned murderous.

“Of course, sir.” Phillips said dreamily. He smiled and waved bye-bye as Herbert and Dan were shoved bodily from the room.

“He’s going to kill Meg,” Dan said on the stairs.

“Dan please.”

Bevans struck them both on the back of the head. “Quiet.”

They were shown to a parlor which held a long table made of exotic wood. Heavy-duty plastic wrap coated the walls and floor. Dan and Herbert were shoved into opposite chairs, made to face each other.

Dan put his head in his hands. “Meg’s going to die. We’re going to die.”

“Please, Dan.”

“Please _what_ , Herbert? Please _what?”_

Herbert gave him a pained look. “I’m thinking.”

Dan burst into a bout of hysterical laughter, doubling over and pressing his face into the table. “You’re _thinking!_ The great Herbert West is _thinking!_ Think away, you have the whole rest of your life to think.”

“I wish you’d have a little faith in me, Dan. Just once.”

Dan glanced up, tears in his eyes. “How? In what universe have you earned my trust?”

Herbert looked hurt. “I’ve gotten us out of plenty of situations like this.”

“We’ve never been in _any_ situation like this, and you know it. There is no coming back, you maniacal bastard.”

“Dan—”

“Don’t say my name anymore. I’m not anything to you. I never was. You just have this psychotic need for a sycophant, someone to fluff your ego—”

“—that isn’t true and you know it—”

“— _look what happened to Phillips!”_ Herbert cringed. Dan saw he'd struck a chord and dug in harder. “Yeah. That’s what you do to people, you use them up. Everyone around you either gets killed or winds up an empty shell. The only reason you took any interest in Meg is because you thought you played a part in her creation, and that stoked your ego nicely, didn’t it?” Dan raised his voice, jolting the guards at the door. “She’d still be alive if you had just run away!”

The thing that hurt the most, really, was that Herbert couldn’t really refute any of this. He could, perhaps with time and space, come up with sufficient counterarguments. But Dan was hammering him below the belt and showed no sign of stopping.

“What good would that have done?” Herbert’s voice vibrated. “They’d found us once already, who’s to say—”

“They didn’t find us.” Dan slumped down in his seat. His voice was spent. “I called it in.”

Herbert soundlessly mouthed words for a moment. “...You what?”

“They were never going to stop looking until they found me. Shepard has endless resources and manpower, he would have found me eventually. So I made the call. I made sure you two would be out somewhere when they got me. I sacrificed myself for someone else.  I know you won’t really understand that, because altruism is a human trait.”

Herbert blinked. “Y-you...you…”

Dan smiled humorlessly. “I don’t know why I thought it would work. You’re a cold-blooded calculating bastard, Herbert. I just want you to know that before they kill us both.”

Herbert cleared his throat. “Dan? Listen to me.” Dan wouldn’t look at him. Herbert grasped his hand. “We’re getting out of this.”

“Please just for once, stop talking,” Dan said wearily. He slid his hand from Herbert’s grasp.

The parlor door flew open, curtailing any more speech.

“Gentleman,” Shepard announced, “who’s up for a game?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One thing I don't like about _Beyond Re-animator_ (well, besides all the...not good things about it) is that they didn't let Jason Barry speak with his own accent. I mean, even though they were leaning hard into pretending the movie was in America with American characters, New England has a pretty public Irish diaspora. Would it have killed them to include that? Plus, Jason Barry's natural accent is charming and would have added _something_ to the character, maybe then it would have been easier to pretend the movie wasn't just Herbert's sloppy seconds with Dan 2.0. Also, why the hell did they think replacing an established relationship between two characters (because shock! horror! they were old and nobody wants to watch two old guys apparently) with a watered-down version of the same would be at all compelling ...
> 
> ...Okay, deep breath. rant over.


	13. Parlor Games

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: More mentions of attempted assault, one depiction of suicide, and a whole lotta dead folks

Shepard sat at the head of the table, rattling the wood with his fingertips.

“Julian,” he said, “will you be joining us?”

A long moment of hesitation, before a meek “no,” floated in from the other room. Shepard sighed and shook his head.

“No stomach anymore,” he lamented. “It was like that with cousin Quentin. Remember Quentin, Bevans?”

“Yes, sir. A lamentable state of affairs.”

“Of course he still attended the pigeon shoot afterwards,” Shepard confided in his captives, “tragic accident happened with a gun going off. Nerves.” 

Dan gave the facial expression equivalent of a middle finger. Herbert looked bored.

Shepard rubbed his hands together. “Gentlemen, I have the idea for a _sparkling_ wager. Have either of you played the game _Would You Rather?”_

Both men shook their heads.

Shepard stumbled a bit. “That’s...odd. I would have thought this game was universal. Well, it’s very simple, the game is all right there in the name. Would you rather do X or Y? I’ll give an example. Dr. Cain, would you rather kiss Bevans…”

Bevans gave a homely smile.

“...or Dr. West there.”

Herbert looked at the tabletop.

“I’ve got something you can kiss,” Dan said dryly.

 Bevans slapped him upside the head.

“Now gentlemen, it’s not going to be any fun if you’re going to be like that.” Shepard frowned. “You’ve got a fifty/fifty shot at winning.”

Herbert turned slowly and deliberately to Shepard. “That’s a very blatant lie, Mr. Lambrick. Please don’t lie to me, it’s very insulting.”

Shepard laughed. “Dr. West, coming in hot right out of the gates. Tell me: what makes you say that?”

Herbert looked at Shepard like he was examining a dissected frog. “The game is predicated on the illusion of fairness. You aim isn’t to get one of us to the next round, your aim is to cause the most damage possible to either of us before we die. You are not a philanthropist, you are a sadist who uses these games as a vehicle for torture. Paying lip service to the notion of fairness is absurd.”

Shepard studied Herbert, shaking his head. “I just cannot get a bead on you, Dr. West.”

“Welcome to the club. It has many former members.”

Fido padded into the room, face lit up with canine joy. He nudged his nose into Dan’s hand. Dan recoiled in shocked disgust. Fido woofed a little, circling the table. Herbert followed his path with his gaze.

Shepard sighed. “Well, if you boys are going to be killjoys, I guess we have no other option but to press forward. Now Dr. Cain: would you rather get stabbed with an icepick in the thigh?”

Bevans held out an icepick that was stained brownish-red.

“Or stab Dr. West with that same icepick?”

Dan pushed out his chair. “Let me have it.”

“Dan,” Herbert said calmly.

“Shut up.”

“You know there’s no way to win this, right?”

Dan so looked old, so very old, as he advanced on Herbert. His eyes were weary and sad and angry and his shoulders stooped as he walked, the weight of years on his back. “There never was any winning. Not with us.”

Herbert put out a hand, stopping the icepick tip. “Before you do anything, I want to finish my story.”

“Time’s a-wastin, gentlemen.”

“I really don’t want to hear it,” Dan said, his voice dull as lead.

“It’ll only take a minute. I was lying on the prison bed, remember? My cellmate told me to roll over, and then he grabbed me when I refused. He kept me pinned with one arm as he undid his belt.”

Dan swallowed, glancing away as a tear dropped down his cheek.

“He tried to...do things to me, but my body was just so rigid and unpleasant to him that he couldn’t...perform.” Herbert gestured vaguely. “So perhaps you are right, Dan, I'm a cold, unfeeling bastard. Perhaps I'm not human, for a given value of what the word ‘human’ means to you. And if that’s the case, then yes, perhaps it would benefit everyone to remove me from the field.”

Dan raised the icepick. His face was conflicted as he centered the point over Herbert’s jugular. 

Herbert smiled weakly at him. “Be gentle, it’s my first time.

Dan broke. “ _Fuck_ ,” he sobbed. The icepick slid from his grasp. He caught Herbert’s head and pressed their foreheads together, gripping his hair with both hands. Herbert leaned into the touch, smiling ever so slightly, catching up his forearms.

Shepard took this all in with a look of distaste. “Now what the hell is this? I saw you boys go in with a good, frothing hate, and this is what you give me? Sit the hell back down.”

Bevans wrenched them apart and sent them back to their seats. Dan snorted liquidly, mopping his face. Herbert let his eyes linger on Dan for a good long while before he caught sight of Fido again. 

“Well this is just no fun at all. I’m going to have to supervise you to make sure you follow through with your end of the bargain. Dr. West, since you’re so set on performing, why don’t you take his turn? Now…” he wet his lips, eyes glittering. “Would you rather stab Dr. Cain with that same icepick…”

Bevans offered the pick again.

“...or get whipped three times by Bevans with a sjambok?”

A thick stick dropped onto the tabletop, rocking slightly. Herbert looked at neither option. Instead he looked stoically forward, keeping Fido in his peripheral vision.

“Dr. West?”

Fido took another lap of the table.

“We’ll have to choose for you if you don’t. What do you say?”

Herbert turned and looked Bevans in the eye.

“ _Töten_ ,” he said.

Fido transformed. His lips rolled back and bared his teeth, every muscle in his body tensed as he sprang up. Bevans had exactly enough time to develop a look of utter terror before he fell, Fido's teeth snapping at his throat.

Shepard stood. “Bevans!”

Dan stood, hefting his chair. Shepard halfway drew his gun but Dan was faster and batted him into the wall so hard he rebounded. The gun skidded away. Shepard attempted to recover but Dan was on him, punching him, the weight of all his anger and terror behind his fist.

The guards at the door were firing at this point, but Herbert was already under the table as cover. He fumbled for Shepard’s revolver. As the guards concentrated their fire on Fido, Herbert took aim.

One shot took out a guard’s ankle, Herbert got him in the head as he fell. The other guard fell back out of the room, holding his gun low as he emptied the clip. Bullets pitted the floor before Herbert, but he remained safe beneath the table. That would be subject to change.

Herbert climbed out. Dan was still caught up in his bloodlust, hammering Shepard with blows in the face and head. Herbert caught his fist.

“Dan,” he said, “Meg.”

It had the effect of a cup of cold water upended over his head. Dan came back to himself.

“Meg,” he gasped. He stood, wiping his hand on his shirt. “We have to get Meg.”

Herbert examined the gun. “I have ten shots left.”

“Not enough. We need another gun.”

Bevans tried to produce his, but Fido fell on his arm. Bullet holes spotted his hide, he wheezed through a hole in his ribcage, but still the man-dog chewed on.

Dan twisted the gun from Bevans’ grasp. He gestured to the downed butler with the barrel. Herbert looked at Bevans, then at Fido. He shook his head. Dan shrugged.

More guards were gathering outside the door. The two men took up cover on either side of the opening. Herbert looked around for anything he could use as a distraction. His eyes alighted on a bottle of expensive brandy on Dan’s side. He motioned with his eyes. Dan followed. He nodded, sticking his gun into the waist of his pants.

A thick linen napkin got stuffed into the open mouth of the bottle. Dan lit it with a spill from the fireplace.

“Mr. Lambrick? Bevans, sir? Are you alive? Send us a signal!”

Dan flung the Molotov cocktail through the open door. It hit one of the guards.

Flames splattered from him to the unlucky few flanking him. Taking advantage of the melee as they tried to put the flames out, Dan and Herbert peered around the doorjamb and fired. They got off a few lucky shots on the guards that had been standing outside the splash zone, the ones left were too concerned with the flames consuming their clothing to be bothered. Herbert grabbed up a spare gun as they waded through the chaos. They found themselves back in the front  room.

“Meg’s in the basement. The elevator works on a keypad, but they’re bound to have the door covered.”

Herbert checked his watch. “If we can draw enough of their fire up here, maybe one of us can break away and get down there. Alternatively, there might be a servant’s entrance in the kitchen.”

“Pantry,” Meg said.

Both men glanced up in shock.

Meg stood on the upper landing. Her makeshift bandage had been replaced by a neat circle of gauze and medical tape. She smiled smugly at their expression. 

“Boys” she said as she descended the stairs.

“Meg,” Dan nearly sobbed in relief. He caught her halfway down the stairs, hugging her like he might never let her go.

Herbert exchanged smirks with her.

“How’d you get out,” he asked her, “your feminine wiles?”

Meg gave her dad an extra squeeze. “That Dr. Phillips guy, he’s not right in the head. He started calling me Emily. So I just said yeah, I'm Emily. I asked him if I could go upstairs and he let me go.”

The two men exchanged looks. “That...was surprisingly easy.”

A gunshot pinged the stairs, reminding them that not everything would be. Herbert took the stairs two at a time, overtaking Meg and Dan. He drew his backup pistol and took lead, Dan sandwiching Meg between their bodies. 

They followed the upper hallway. Herbert slid along the wall, eyes out to any potential ambush. A door opened to his left and he fell inward with an undignified yelp.

Julian backed away from the open door, eyes wide. Dan and Meg joined Herbert at the door, faces contorting in twin expressions of disgust.

“Oh great. _This_ asshole.”

Julian gripped Herbert’s lapels, drawing him back to a stand. “I n-need to talk to you.”

Herbert nodded back at the door. Dan kicked it shut.

“So talk.”

Julian drew away, wringing his hands. The room was decorated with crucifixes, Herbert noted, with the biggest one of all hung above the balcony. The balcony door was open, the cool night air of freedom blowing into their faces.

“Th-the voices.” Julian looked haunted. “Ever since you did that...thing to me, I can’t stop hearing them. They keep telling me I'm doing wrong, I'm sinning, I need to stop what I'm doing.”

“...you mean a conscience?” Dan asked, flabbergasted.

Julian put his hands together as if in prayer. “Please, por el amor de Dios, I can’t go on like this. Make it stop!”

Herbert looked down his nose at Julian. “Well, your father took my bag when he raided my house. It’s a pretty good bet any NPE canisters that were in it are now broken, your original included. I have to say it looks like the only way forward is to make peace with the way things are now.”

Julian’s face twisted in utter despair before falling blank. He stood and calmly started walking backwards. He didn’t stumble, didn’t stop, even when the back of his legs met the railing.

They remained staring at the place where he’d been.

“Did he just...kill himself to get out of acting like a better person?” Meg asked in bewilderment.

“I’m sure it’s a little more complex than that, but yes, I don’t think master Lambrick could live with what he was anymore.” Herbert cleared his throat. “Shall we?”

They peered over the balcony railing. Julian had landed on a security vehicle below the window, shattering the windshield. Herbert heard shouting as flashlight beams danced over his prone body.

“No good, he’s drawn too much attention.”

Dan swore. “What about the servant’s entrance, could we go down that?”

“Oh, um, calling it an ‘entrance’ is kinda pushing it. I had to crawl partway up a dumbwaiter, and believe me, that was tricky even at my size.” Meg bit her lip.

Herbert sighed through his nose. “The elevator is undoubtedly guarded, although I think the guards are probably spread relatively thin at this point.”

“So what, do we just waltz out the front door?”

Herbert hesitated. “...it’s not the worst idea.”

“What?” Dan asked.

“Think about it: they will be looking at side entrances and the basement. Who would expect us to use the main door?”

Dan looked at him a good long time. “This does not sound like a good idea.”

“Do you have any others?”

The shouts grew louder as flashlight beams lit up the balcony curtains. They all took a step back from the door.

Dan sighed. “Whatever happens, stick behind me, okay.”

“Can I get a piggyback ride then? My legs are tired.”

Dan laughed wearily, fluffing her hair. He was rocking on his feet a little. Herbert realized they were all running on adrenaline (or in his case, adrenaline and chemical fumes) and did not have much fight left in them for a final push. He hefted his gun.

“Shall we?” he asked.

He poked his head out in the hall. There was a pair of guards checking doors not ten paces from them, but they had backs turned to him. Herbert got them both in the back. Nodding to Dan, he pushed out into the hall. The foyer was shockingly empty of guard presence. Herbert descended the stairs in a near-crouch, mindful of every corner and doorway. Dan kept two paces behind him, cloaking Meg with his body.

Herbert made it to the ground floor and relaxed slightly. “That was—”

The balustrade next to him exploded. Herbert dove back at the stairs for cover.

Shepard Lambrick lurched into view. His face and shirt were bloody, and he teetered unsteadily as he hefted a shotgun.

“Bast’rds,” he slurred. “Th’s is what I get for tryna do something nice.”

Meg burst out into sobs. She wrenched out of her father's grasp and ran toward Shepard.

“I can’t take it anymore,” she shouted “I'm so sorry, gramps, please don’t shoot me!”

“Meg!” Dan stood, and immediately dropped to cover again as Shepard took out the railing by his head.

Meg stopped a few paces from Shepard, cringing as he turned the barrel to her. “I’m sorry,” she said in a feathery little voice, “I don’t want anymore guns or killing. I’m so sorry I wasn’t nicer to you, you were being so generous to me and my dad and we were ungrateful.”

Shepard gave a smug wobble. “See Cain? She gets it.”

Dan’s face was pure shock. Herbert caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He looked up to see a hand crawling along the chandelier chain like an albino tarantula. Silver gleamed as the scalpel in its grip caught the light.

Herbert smiled.

Meg pushed her lower lip out. “Can we be nice to each other again? You’ve given me so much and I want the chance to pay you back.”

“Welll, little lady,” Shepard drawled condescendingly. His shotgun weaved a drunken figure eight in the air. “You and your pops have a lot to answer for. I’m not so ready to forgive—”

Meg’s hand dropped from the chandelier, burying the scalpel blade in his neck. Shepard’s face registered shock for a moment. He batted at the scalpel like it was an errant mosquito. He turned to Meg, whose face was hardened and cold.

“That’s for cutting my hand off, asshole,” she said.

Shepard pulled the scalpel out, falling to his knees as blood spurted from his neck. The shotgun fell too, taking out a section of the wall with it.

“Should’ve left that in,” Meg said sagely. She shrieked as Dan caught her up in a bone-crushing hug.

“You’re brilliant, I love you, _never do anything like that again_ ,” he growled.

Meg returned the hug, her severed hand crawling up his pant leg to rest on his shoulder. Dan drew back and looked at it.

“This is your hand?” he delicately took hold of a finger. “I had no idea you could do something like this.”

“Oh wow, that’s funny, because there’s a few things _I_ had no idea about either.” she gave Dan a severe look.

Dan sighed. “Okay, when this is all over, yell at me all you want. But I need to get you out of here first, because you can’t be angry with me if you’re dead.”

“I think we all know that’s not true,” Herbert said slyly.

“You stay out of this.”

Herbert peered out the window beside the front door. Lights danced over the front lawn as the guards advanced on the front door, drawn by the sound of gunshots.

“I hate to interrupt a tender moment, but we really _do_ need to get out of here.” Herbert squinted. Smoke was starting to drift in from the burning hallway. “Our egress has been cut off once again. We need to occupy the remaining security forces somehow. The fire will help, but we need something bigger.”

“What else could we do? Anything we might use is down in the basement, and that’s pretty much a no-go at this point.”

Herbert turned to Meg. “Do you think you could go down the dumbwaiter again?”

Meg pressed her lips together. “Um, maybe? It would be tricky, but yeah.”

“We can’t fit down that way, Herbert,” Dan said.

Herbert smirked.  “Wasn’t what I had in mind.”

 

Jeffries gripped his gun, teeth chattering. The radio was pure chaos, there was no one left to call for help. He nearly shrieked as the elevator numbers lit up, slowly descending. He pointed his gun at the doors with shaking hands. 

The elevator opened up on Herbert and Dan in mid-conversation. They caught sight of Jeffries and nodded casually. 

“Hands up, w-where I can see them,” he said.

The two men smiled, raising their hands to shoulder height.

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry too much about us,” Herbert said patronizingly.

Jeffries tried to look mean. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. I'd worry more about that.” Dan pointed a finger behind him.

Jeffries half-turned to find Meg bearing a syringe that still held traces of glowing green liquid. She smiled like a child caught sneaking cookies.

“Oopsie,” she giggled.

A corpse rose from the floor and tackled him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When it comes to Dan and Herbert's relationship, I believe the following two statements:  
> * Herbert holds some kind of affection, be it romantic or otherwise, for Dan that he does not hold for anyone else.  
> * Herbert is manipulative  
> I don't think these two statements contradict each other. Herbert strikes me as someone who did not grow up having healthy behavior to model after, hence his reliance on manipulation and emotional blackmail when backed into a corner, and the nebulous nature of his relationship with Dan. Of course, we're really talking about three different Herberts here, as character definition varies between the three film versions. Herbert from the first movie strikes me as someone trying to recreate the relationship he had with Gruber, but with him in the mentor role . Herbert of the second movie is more in a grey area with regards to romantic vs intellectual attachment to Dan, his possessiveness points it a bit more to the former for me. Herbert of _Beyond_ has no social attachments that I can see, he doesn't seem to form the bond with Dr. Phillips that he did with Dan, and their relationship is centered almost entirely around their experiments. This actually strikes me as pretty realistic character development, as Herbert (having been burned by the one closest to him) closed himself off emotionally to prevent from being hurt again. I feel like this is reflected best in the endings: in the first two movies Herbert comes to Dan's aid and gets dragged down. Herbert abandons his Dan-proxy in the third and walks away free and clear.  
> I feel like this also supports my theory on the personal nature of their relationship: having Dan around always complicates things, yet Herbert will continually go out of his way to involve him. Call it co-dependency, call it an ego-driven narcissist's need for an audience, but our Herbie does not like to work alone.


	14. It's a Dead Man's Party

The man that stepped from the surplus army jeep had a walk that sliced the air like a knife.  _ I have places to be, _ the walk said,  _ and if you know what’s good for you you’ll lead, follow, or get out of the way. _ The tightly controlled swing of his limbs said “military”, the cut of his clothes said “private sector”. His men spread out behind him like orderly locusts. The lone guard who stood at the lower-level entrance to the Lambrick quaked as they approached.

“Status,” the man barked.

The guard, clad in a blood-spattered tuxedo, saluted. “U-u-unknown, sir.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“All hell’s broken loose. There’s—there’s bodies rising up, there’s fire—it’s crazy in there.”

The man looked unimpressed. “We’ll be the judge of that. Is this door still operable?”

The iron gate that serviced the delivery entrance was firmly closed. “I-it is, sir,” the guard stammered, “but—”

The man dismissed the guard with a snap of his fingers. “Hit it.”

His men flanked him, spreading out in an arrowhead formation. 

He drew his weapon. His men followed suit. 

With a tight nod, he bid the door open.

225 pounds of reanimated corpse launched into him, knocking him down. He emptied the clip but it had as much effect as a water pistol. His men maintained discipline for a grand total of two minutes, until a test subject culled from the local pillbilly population came at them, ribs exposed. All manner of ancestral horrors awoke in them and they fired blindly into the fray. The reanimated dead kept coming despite missing limbs, jaws, and skin. Even when shot in the head, their limbs and trunks continued to move. One man had the bright idea to fetch a grenade from the jeep’s armory; unfortunately he had only just pulled the pin before a woman with weeping sores on her face clamped her teeth on his wrist. The grenade rolled at his feet, and he had just enough time to dive fruitlessly to the side before it went off. The blast ignited the boxes of ammo and incendiary devices they had left in the jeep.

Beneath layers of fill dirt and reinforced concrete walls, Herbert listened to the series of seismic thuds.

“Sounds like they brought backup,” he said thoughtfully.

“Wonder how  _ that’s  _ going for them.”

Dan was aligning the ragged edges of Meg’s extensor digitorum while Herbert whipped neat little stitches down the tear. They worked together to reattach Meg’s hand while they still had full run of Lambrick’s facilities. Meg lounged to the side, giving the occasional “ow” despite the local anesthetic, reading a ragged paperback romance novel they’d found amusingly tucked in a guard’s locker.

Herbert pulled away, doing wrist stretches. “It sounds like it’s petering off up there. We should probably leave soon.”

“You’d better finish up first. I don’t want a big, yucky scar.” Meg flipped a page in  _ The Scoundrel’s Buccaneer. _

“You should be more worried about regaining normal mobility in that hand,” Herbert said, clipping a suture.

Dan pressed a kiss to her head. “Just a little while longer, baby. You’ll be okay.”

When they finished they wrapped the wrist with a brace, then constructed a temporary sling with some pressure bandages.

Hebert put out a stern finger. “Keep that arm still.”

Meg rolled her eyes. “Yes  _ mom _ .”

“I mean it. The stitches  are not load-bearing.”

“So? Don’t I have super-healing powers from all the corpse juice in my blood?”

“That isn’t even remotely how that works,” Herbert snapped.

Dan got in between them. “Kids? I think it’s time to go.”

The hall outside was pandemonium. Dan hefted a crowbar while Herbert wielded a riot stick he’d taken from a guard’s corpse.

“Umm, don’t you guys have guns?” Meg asked.

“In here? I hope you don’t mind going deaf, then, because a gunshot at close quarters pushes 200 decibels.”

A gibbering dead man flung himself at the trio. Dan got him in the head while Herbert swept his legs out from under him.

“Besides, we got this,” Dan muttered, flashing her a cheesy grin. Meg tried not to smile back.

“I feel like a princess in an escort mission.”

“Queen of the undead,” Herbert quipped. Meg jabbed him playfully in the ribs.

They navigated the maze of concrete halls, trying not to call too much attention to themselves. They had almost made it free and clear when they ran into a living person.

Howard Phillips had a dazed look on his face. He clutched a stack of papers to his chest and stared at the chaos around him like a dog considering a butterfly that hovered just outside the window.

“I didn’t make these,” he said in an almost childlike voice.

Herbert raised his riot stick, a question on his face. Meg surprised him by shoving it down and stepping forward.

“Howie?” she said in a pleasant voice.

Phillips was suddenly back in his body, though his eyes still glazed in unreality. He looked at her with shining eyes.

“Emily?” He let the papers slide from his arms. Meg put her hand on his arm.

“Howie?” she said in a careful voice, “you need to go outside. It’s not safe in here.”

Phillips flashed a look to the two men who stood at ready behind her. Cognitive dissonance warred on his face. “It’s...it’s not?”

“Come on.” She took him by the hand and led the way.

The guard at the delivery gate was dead, as was the man who had chewed out his throat. The gate sat open like a gaping mouth. Night waited on the other side, smelling like freedom.

Flames were beginning to consume the house in earnest, a faint glow could be seen in the upper windows. The jeep was now a flaming crater and most of the reinforcements strewn about the lawn like chopped straw.

Meg led Phillips out on the lawn and then sat him down, putting her hand on his shoulder.

“Howie,” she said, “I want you to stay here, okay? There’s going to be policemen, and I need you to wait here for them.”

Phillips clutched at her. “What about you, Emily? I just got you back.”

Meg caught his hand and held it. She smiled at him. “I’ll be okay, Howie. Now I want you to be okay. I want you to go back to the hospital.”

Phillips looked confused. “But I'm not sick.”

“But you’re not well,” she said gently, “I want you to get all better, okay? For me? Take your medicine and get better.”

Phillips started crying as he clutched her hand, not letting go until she slipped her fingers from his.

“Okay,” he said, “for you.”

She pet his head, then she turned to her father. “Okay. we can go now.”

Meg let out a relieved sigh as they rounded the house to the carriage house. “See, wasn’t that easy? No death, no dismemberment.”

“Well, not unless you count them.” Herbert gestured at the guards fragmented around them.

Meg jogged him with her elbow. “Will you just let me have this?”

“I guess,” Herbert said loftily. She shot him a smirk, he returned it.

The fleet of black SUVs parked around the carriage house were nearly invisible in the dark. Dan searched a downed guard until he found a black car fob. He clicked it and a corresponding flash of headlights answered. 

Meg swiped the plastic lozenge. “Dibs!”

Dan snatched futility at her back. “Hey, I never said you could drive.”

“You never said I couldn’t!” Meg drew up to the car and hopped inside. 

“You can bring it to the end of the drive, no further!” Dan called. Meg waved at him through the window.

“You should have more confidence in her,” Herbert remarked, “she’s accomplished a lot today.”

“Yeah, but she drives like a coked-out chimp.”

Herbert ruminated on that. “True.”

Meg touched the fob to an indentation on the dashboard and the car whirred to life. She buckled awkwardly with her remaining hand, and then waved to her dad as she put it in drive.

Dan mouthed  _ ‘slowly’  _ to her.

As Meg eased the car out from between the others in the fleet, Bevans popped up from behind the driver’s seat like a bad dream. His eyepatch was missing and they were treated to the full horror of scar tissue where his eye had been. The butler wedged his body between the seats and pressed a knife to Meg’s neck.

“Meg!” Dan broke into a run.

Meg screamed shrilly, stepping on the gas and zipping past her father. She made it a few hundred yards and then slammed on the brakes. Bevans, unsecured by a seatbelt, was launched through the windshield and slammed headfirst into the concrete. Dan ran to her door and yanked it open. Meg took deep, gasping breaths, hand to her throat where the knife had been. Dan unbuckled her and dragged her from the car, catching her up in another bear hug.

She laughed exhaustedly, flapping her hand at his arms. “Stop, stop, you’re gonna squeeze me to death.”

“And not a jury in the world would convict me,” Dan growled, peppering her scalp with kisses.

While they were preoccupied Herbert located another keyfob, whistling merrily as he sorted through body parts. He started the car up and drove slowly up beside the pair.

“Going my way?”

Dan looked at him through the bird’s nest he’d made of Meg’s hair. “Are you good to drive?”

“Are you?”

“Touché.”

“All in favor of getting the fuck out of here, raise your hand.” Meg popped open the backseat door. Dan rode shotgun.

Herbert guided the SUV down the long, winding drive and through the automated gate. He took the curves of the private road leading to the Lambrick mansion gently. Dan’s head bobbed along with each turn.

“Well,” Herbert said crisply, “for the first order of business, I suggest we find alternative transportation. It’s very likely that this car has a GPS tracker of some kind. Then we should find some lodgings, it has been quite a night.”

Meg gave a murmuring reply. She had pillowed her head on her right arm, her blinks were coming slower and slower.

Dan gave him a long look. “And then?”

Herbert found his throat strangely tight. “Well I don’t know. Do you agree that I have some...unsavory tendencies when it comes to medical etiquette?”

“Undoubtedly.” 

“I might suggest, then, that you...that you both stick around for a while. Just to...monitor my activities. It would be the pragmatic decision.” Herbert did not smile, but the muscles around his eyes constricted as if he was.

Dan pretended to think long and hard. “Well, when you put it like that, I suppose I'm duty-bound to, ah, supervise.”

“Of course your personal expertise would be most welcome.”

“Of course.”

“And I would like to investigate Meg’s biologic abnormalities.”

“Naturally.”

“And I  _ am  _ tired of staying at motels.”

“We’ll get a place with an attached cemetery,” Dan said dryly, “or a mausoleum.”

“I’d settle for a nice basement,” Herbert said, guiding them back onto the main road. The men met gazes for a moment and glanced away smiling.

“It’s been a long time,” Herbert said in a more somber tone, “we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

“We do.”

The trio drove on into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My thanks to all you beautiful people who read and enjoyed, read and commented, or just read the thing. *giant kiss* I have an idea for a semi-sequel to this, mostly centered around Dan and Herbert's relationship, but I don't have an timeline for that one. I guess...I'll see you when I see you?  
> Fin


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